Joanne Stanway was working in the public relations department at Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island when she was pregnant with her daughter. She was asked if she'd like to participate in medical teleconferences to test new equipment. In exchange, she was offered new ultrasound pictures of the baby.

"Early in my 8th month, I was having one of these ultrasounds when the tech casually said over the microphone to the participating physicians, 'As you can see, the baby is breech,'" says Stanway, now living in Chelmsford, Mass. "I didn't know that. This was frightening because I had not experienced any problems during my pregnancy."

Many babies are breech at some time during their days in the womb, but only a small percentage (less than 5 percent) are born breech. When a baby is breech, it means a part of the fetus's body other than the head is in the birth position. There are different types of breech positions.

"A breech presentation is when the baby's bottom is in the birth canal," explains Dr. Randy Fink, an OB/GYN in Miami, Fla. "Breech babies can be footling breech (foot coming first), frank breech (when the legs are folded in the front of the baby with the feet near the face) or complete breech (depending on how the legs are folded). Most babies arrive head first into the world because the diameter of the head is smaller than the diameter of the hips, so therefore it passes more easily into mom's pelvis."

There are a number of reasons why a baby will flip into a breech position. "It can be random," says Dr. John Schmitt, division head at the University of Virginia Health System's Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "The baby turns all the time during the first two trimesters, and sometimes they get trapped." This happens when the pregnancy is moving into the third trimester and the baby has become too large to move freely.

The shape of the mother's uterus is another reason why babies end up breech. Mothers who have a history of uterine fibroids or other uterine problems are likely to have a baby who moves into a breech presentation. Or if the mother has had a number of pregnancies previously, it could be that the uterus has stretched, giving the baby more room than normal to move around.

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