During a natural cesarian birth, doctor makes the normal incision for a c-section delivery and pulls the baby’s head out of the womb. After that, it’s a hands-off process. For the mother in the video, Sarah Saunders, sharing footage of the unusual delivery was vital: “I wanted to share this video to show that, if you are unable to give birth “naturally,” that having a natural cesarean is the next best thing,” Saunders said in the video’s description. It’s truly a weird sight to watch a doctor pull a baby’s head out of a uterus and literally drop it in their mother’s lap, but it’s all a part of this unique process. Once the head is out and the baby starts to cry a little, the doctor removes him up to his shoulders and again rests the baby in his mother’s lap. It’s at this point that nurses in the video can be heard saying that “he’s delivering himself.” Not too long after, the baby boy wriggles his whole body out of the womb, with the doctor only supporting the baby’s head. Delivering the baby with a natural cesarean is a deviation from the commonly-held assumption that c-sections are a trying method of birth. However, in Saunders’s video, everyone seems extremely relaxed; everyone, except the baby, of course. There are also health benefits that come with the “natural cesarean” route, or what the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology calls “walking the baby out.” Usually, c-section babies are born with excess mucus in their lungs that can later cause respiratory problems, but, by letting the head out and allowing the baby to breathe while still inside their mother, a natural cesarean allows the placenta to continue circulating the mucus out of the newborn’s lungs.
