public involvement and engagement – The OptiBreech Project

PPI: Proposal Development Phase – Implementation of Bedside Resuscitation

Nimisha Johnstone, @OptiBreech PPIE lead, shares women’s views of why it’s important we help babies to start breathing with the cord intact when needed. @NIHRinvolvement

In autumn/winter 2022, the OptiBreech research team spent time developing a research proposal for a study to investigate the implementation of bedside resuscitation for breech babies who require breathing assistance at birth. In my role as a PPI leader with the OptiBreech trial, I sought input from breech presenting mothers and birth workers through small group interviews.

I am the mother of a baby who presented breech at the end of pregnancy. I planned a vaginal breech birth and agreed to allow my birth data to contribute to the OptiBreech study in 2021. Since then, I have become involved in enabling other mothers of breech-presenting babies to become involved in shaping the evolution of this research.

Birth Experience

I spoke with 7 women with a breech presentation at term and 1 doula over video calls in groups of 2. We started by sharing our breech birth experiences and the themes of lack of choice and lack of confidence in birthing professionals echoed across all interviews. The need for support towards a physiological breech birth was not met in many of the experiences resulting in a lack of choice and feelings of coercion towards a c-section. They reported a confidence in their body’s own ability to birth breech, but a lack in the birthing professional’s ability to confidently support them.

The mothers were aware of optimal cord clamping and the benefits, however, similar to the women in our OptiBreech studies, they had reported feeling let down because the cord was clamped immediately, despite stating their wishes on their birth plan. They also reported not being made informed as to why the cord was clamped immediately.

Some of the mothers also reported their baby being taken to a resuscitation table out of sight without being informed. Seeing their baby on the resuscitation table led to feelings of self-doubt, guilt and questioning whether they had made the right choices.

Is this research proposal important and relevant?

The research proposal aims to answer two questions:

What are the outcomes for mother and baby for term breech pregnancies within the services offering optibreech care?
And can bedside stabilisation and/or resuscitation following vaginal breech births be successfully implemented with provision of a bedside unit and staff training?

About 1:5 babies born after a vaginal breech birth need some help to start breathing, and about 1:10 are transferred to a neonatal intensive care unit after the birth. We feel we can reduce this to 1:5 (the UK national average for all births) if our specialist teams are able to provide help next to the mother. This will result in better long-term outcomes for the baby. Families have better experiences if they are not separated from babies, during resuscitation or after. Women in our OptiBreech studies have reported feeling let down because in most births where the baby appeared to need help, the cord was cut immediately, despite OptiBreech and UK Resuscitation Council guidance.

All mothers strongly support the research proposal and believe optimal cord clamping and keeping the baby near to them immediately post-birth is hugely important. Some mothers reported feelings of confusion as to why this did not happen in their experience because they felt it was quite obvious that babies should be near their mother immediately post-birth, therefore were supportive of having a bedside unit so that they could always see their baby if they needed resuscitating.

Mothers reported doing more research on neo-natal death rates resulting in them feeling less informed around the need for resuscitation. Sharing this scenario before birth would help to keep the mother informed around a potential post-birth scenario as well as the need to keep the mother informed in real-time should a resuscitation unit be needed.

Language

The importance of the use of language was highlighted, in particular the use of the word “resuscitation” did not resonate well with some of the mothers as it can lead to negative connotations such as not being able to breathe or death. There was an understanding that the resuscitation table is also used for clearing the lungs and or for simply checking the baby and therefore the word “resuscitation” should be carefully considered when speaking to mothers to avoid panic. “Transition” was one replacement word suggested, however, there were mixed responses to this word as some felt it wasn’t specific enough and needed explaining whereas others responded positively saying it’s a mid-way point. There will need to be further consideration around the use of language and the most appropriate terminology to use.

Thank You

We ended the session by sharing our motivation for joining this PPI meeting and learnt that mothers wanted to be a part of the driving force behind normalising physiological breech birth, and to avoid other mothers and birthing people feeling like they have no other option.

I would personally like to say a huge thank you to those who participated in this PPI meeting, it was a pleasure meeting each of you. We value your thoughts and comments to improve on the design of our study to better our research.

Nimisha Johnstone

PPI Meeting, Sunday 30 October, 10 am

We would like to hear from you!

Link to join (Teams)

We are in the process of developing a research proposal for a feasibility study to investigate the implementation of bedside resuscitation for breech babies who require breathing assistance at birth.

Research indicates that providing this immediate care next to mothers/birthing people reduces parental distress and is found to be more favourable by clinicians due to improving communication with parents while they provide care.

The purpose of this group session is to gain insight and feedback regarding our research aims and design from stakeholders to ensure the research is the next piece of the puzzle in improving breech care, designed appropriately, and acceptable to women/birthing people.

We have scheduled this meeting for 90mins to ensure everyone has enough time to discuss the proposal and ask any questions and we will also provide an optional short survey for anyone to provide any additional feedback if they were not able to during the meeting.

The meeting will be held on Sunday 30^th October 10am – 11.30am via Microsoft Teams. You can attend the meeting for the full 90mins or attend like a drop in session.

We look forward to meeting with you and hearing your thoughts.

Link to join

With very best wishes,

The OptiBreech Team

Plain English summary of the research (limit 400 words):

OptiBreech Care is a specialist care pathway for women whose baby is positioned bottom-down (breech) at the end of pregnancy. Our team previously studied how hospitals provide team care when a woman requests a vaginal breech birth to make sure it was possible. In this model, women found it easier to plan their choice of a vaginal breech birth or a pre-labour caesarean birth. Fewer women had emergency caesarean births, and outcomes for babies were at least as good as standard care. OptiBreech teams found one aspect difficult: leaving the umbilical cord attached if the baby needs help to start breathing. Team members told us this is challenging to achieve because they do not have appropriate equipment and training.

We aim to learn how to get optimal cord management right for every birth, how much it will cost and how it may improve outcomes for babies if we do this. We will supply one site with bedside trolleys and team training; another site will use trolleys they already have, with additional support; all thirteen remaining sites will continue to try to implement the recommendations with what they already have. We will observe the process for 12 months initially, during which we would expect 205 planned breech births to occur. We will conduct interviews with staff, parents and birth supporters following births where babies have needed support, to understand how this is working, or not.

By studying the process within small teams, who care for a population at higher risk of needing assistance to begin breathing at birth, we will be able to study and share insights that can improve the process for all teams, across the UK population of term births. We will share our results in scientific papers and a toolkit. Our research team includes a service user who has planned an OptiBreech birth, who will help us to involve other service users in shaping the research and to communicate the results of the research to a wide audience.

Specialist midwives and clinics – inviting your views

Help us get it right, Wednesday 19th January 2022, 12:00-13:00. Are we accurately reflecting your views on breech specialist midwives and clinics?

We would like to invite women, birthing people and their families who have experienced a breech pregnancy at term to attend an online focus group discussion on Wednesday 19th January 2022, 12:00-13:00 to be conducted via Microsoft Teams. Anyone with an interest and experience of breech pregnancy can participate.

The purpose of this meeting will be to get your perspective on the work we have been doing so far.

We have been working on analysing data from qualitative interviews held with OptiBreech 1 participants. To date, we have interviewed 15 women purposefully sampled to reflect various OptiBreech sites, mode of births, and outcomes. Our main objective was to understand what makes the OptiBreech intervention acceptable (or not) to women.

The key themes that we have found are:

Access to skilled breech care: Vaginal breech birth as a viable and safe option is still unknown to many, and lack of specialists reduced equity of access. Women who were referred to a specialist at one of the OptiBreech sites or were already receiving care at a study site found it easy to access and participate in their care. Women who had to transfer care from another hospital or find an OptiBreech site themselves had a difficult time doing so, often requiring increased effort, multiple trips, time off work etc.

Balanced information: Women really appreciated being provided balanced information on the safety and risks of vaginal breech birth vs. caesarean section including possible complications and how to manage them. This enabled them to make autonomous informed decisions and increased self-efficacy and confidence, not only in themselves but also in the breech specialist midwife. Conversely, when women had to do this research themselves because they were not getting cohesive information from the healthcare professionals, this was seen as a burden and sometimes women were made to feel pressure to choose caesarean section as the ‘safe’ choice.

Shared responsibility: Women often felt emotional burden including feelings of stress, judgement, and guilt because of the choices they had made to have a vaginal breech birth, both from family and friends, as well as other healthcare professionals. Speaking with and being cared for by the OptiBreech specialist midwife helped ease this emotional burden and gave the women confidence in their choices.

Team dynamics: We found that women had placed an enormous amount of trust and confidence in the breech specialist midwife which extended to the rest of the team, attributed to previous experience, skills and knowledge. Although women did not know all the members of the team, the trust and confidence was extended to them because of shared responsibility and training requirements needed by all OptiBreech team members.

We need your input on our findings and invite your opinions on whether these findings are relevant to you, if we have interpreted them correctly, or if we have missed any important factors in what makes OptiBreech an acceptable intervention. At the meeting we will present a short summary of our findings so far, and then have an open discussion to hear any thoughts, opinions, or questions you may have.

The meeting will be held on Wednesday 19th January 2022, 12:00-13:00 via Microsoft Teams.

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