Babies can enter the world in one of several ways. Since babies don't have much say in the matter, the decision for which delivery option is best falls to his mother, or, more often, to his mother's medical practitioner. The type of delivery chosen depends on the size of the baby and the mother's pelvis, plus other factors that might necessitate surgical delivery, such as maternal illness or fetal distress.
Spontaneous Vaginal Delivery
Seventy percent of American babies come into the world vaginally, notes the Family Practice Notebook website, with around 65 percent being born without instrument assistance. A baby may not come out as fast as her mother wishes she would, but most of the time, she does emerge from the womb without any help. Most babies enter the world head first and face down, the most effective position, size wise, for the fetal head and pelvis.
Operative Vaginal Delivery
Between 4 and 5 percent of babies are delivered with the help of forceps or vacuum extraction, states Elisabeth Wegner, M.D., on UpToDate.com. Both methods have some risks, but can facilitate the delivery of a baby who is not lined up well with the birth canal, perhaps with his head turned slightly sideways or forward rather than downward. The majority of operative vaginal deliveries are vacuum deliveries, according to Wegner.
Forceps, metal interlocking "spoons" that fit around the baby's head, come in many different types, including the Piper forceps which are designed specifically for breech deliveries. Vacuums are newer devices that apply suction to the baby's head. Vacuum-assisted deliveries often leave the baby with swelling on the head from where the soft tissue was sucked into the vacuum. This looks funny but normally causes the baby no problem, since only tissue and no vital parts of the brain are pulled into the vacuum.
Cesarean Section
Cesarean sections make up over 30 percent of all deliveries in the United States. Some are absolutely necessary to save the life of mother and/or baby, but many more are done for reasons of convenience or patient preference. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports an individual physician's decision to perform cesarean "on demand" without medical justification, but states that as of 2003 evidence to support elective cesarean delivery is incomplete. In 2010, there's still no consensus about the ethics of elective cesarean surgery, which, according to an article published by Yale University Professor of Obstetrics Errol Norwitz, M.D., on UpToDate.com, comprise 1 to 3 percent of all cesarean deliveries in the United States.
