 What risk, according to the author, is increased by practitioners who are wary of performing C-sections?
To understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. "Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route," says Tydeman, "that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy." Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. "There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence," says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory. In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head.
 They could increase the prevalence of impaction and, therefore, challenging births
 They could be sued for malpractice if the fetus does not survive childbirth  They could be sued for malpractice if the mother does not survive childbirth  They could increase the prevalence of impaction and, therefore, challenging births  They could accidentally make the incision in the wrong location, necessitating further costly surgeries