Du Haiwei deftly made a vertical cut with the surgical scissors, part of an episiotomy. Although still classified as a lateral cut procedure, the direction was closer to the six o’clock position.

Doctors always have to decide where to make the incision based on the patient’s specific situation. What the textbooks describe is only the conventional approach. Clinical medicine is a highly flexible field, grounded in principles but requiring adaptable strategies.

After the incision, Doctor Tang helped her husband by pressing a gauze pad on the woman’s cut to stop the bleeding.

"Push hard." Fully prepared, the doctor instructed the woman to exert force.

The second stage of labor officially began.

"Deep breath." Cao Yong stood beside the woman, guiding her.

Li Xiaobing took a deep breath, waited for her contraction pain, and then added force to push the baby.

Everyone kept their eyes fixed on the birthing process.

Boss Du’s hand was guiding the baby’s little buttocks. It’s essential to differentiate here that doctors don’t casually pull during assistance unless critically needed. Instead, they only use their hands to help adjust the baby’s position to suit the mother’s birth canal as it moves out of the body. Random pulling can easily hurt the baby and the mother.

In this situation, it seemed doctors wouldn’t need to use force. That would be incorrect. Doctors must apply force precisely, using the fingertips like Student Xie does now, exerting at one point is more challenging and tiring.

This explains why surgeons need good physical stamina.

Observing closely, Student Lin Hao and Student Li Qi’an behind on tiptoe stifled a low cry. Finally, they saw the baby’s little buttocks appear again. Unlike earlier, this time the appearance wasn’t just one side.

The boss’s guiding was as formulaic as a model, never allowing only one side of the buttocks to show first—a disorder that could lead to a difficult birth. Young doctors have already learned this lesson.

In breech birth, both halves of the baby’s little buttocks must appear together, the rear parts coming out in unison before the front. This results in a graceful emergence like a lotus rising from the water, beautiful and safe. The buttocks appear as a horizontal line. The doctor’s hand reached out to assist in the external rotation of the fetal buttocks, delivering both lower limbs. Both hands of the doctor are engaged now, aiding the baby to twist beautifully like a gymnast, as each leg emerges until the baby’s lower body is wholly visible.

During this, one could hear the doctor continuously instructing the mother to coordinate by exerting force: "Inhale, exhale, push—"

Sweat poured down Li Xiaobing’s face like a river.

Standing beside her, Cao Yong occasionally wiped her sweat away, his expression solemn, occasionally glancing with concern at the situation diagonally across.

During this birthing process, the baby’s umbilical cord is equally crucial; it can’t get caught halfway blocking the cervix. If such an accident occurs, it immediately becomes an emergency.

Xie Wanying, responsible for grasping the umbilical cord through the abdominal wall, had long since her fingers went numb, nearly losing sensation. However, now was not the time to relax; on the contrary, it was reaching an increasingly crucial stage.

What makes breech birth special is its progressively difficult birthing process. Unlike head presentation birth, where once the baby’s head emerges, it typically gets easier.