When a Bloomfield mother began delivering her baby at home, feet first, her uncertified midwife asked, "Do you want to go to the hospital?"

Heather Joy Daley, then 23, recalled saying no, she still wanted to deliver at home. She testified yesterday that the midwife did not explain that continuing the delivery would endanger her son, Isaac, who died two days later of asphyxiation due to breech birth in November 2002.

Mrs. Daley, now 28, testified at the nonjury trial of Judith A. Wilson, 53, of Portersville, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter, endangering the welfare of a child and practicing without a certificate.

Mrs. Daley testified she harbored no ill will toward Mrs. Wilson, who she viewed as a fellow Christian and an experienced practitioner. She spoke on the phone and corresponded by mail with Mrs. Wilson after the defendant's arrest. She only appeared in court because the Allegheny County district attorney issued a subpoena compelling her to do so.

Former Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht recommended that charges be filed against the midwife, stating she was inept from the onset of labor, through the discovery that the baby had traversed feet first through the birth canal, to the end when she failed to administer proper resuscitative techniques.

Paramedics said Isaac was not breathing and had no pulse when they arrived. An obstetrician testified at a preliminary hearing that a "footling breech" calls for an immediate C-section delivery because of the high risk of complications.

Mrs. Daley and her husband, Jonathan, had been going to prenatal visits at the Midwife Center for Birth and Women's Health. When they learned at about 30 weeks' gestation that the baby was breech and midwives might recommend an ultrasound or a surgical procedure, the Daleys found Mrs. Wilson, who was registered with the North American Registry of Midwives, an agency not recognized in Pennsylvania. She was not a certified nurse-midwife and not licensed to practice midwifery in Pennsylvania.

She told them she had delivered about 300 babies and aided in eight breech deliveries.

Mrs. Daley testified that in the weeks prior to delivery the defendant told her the baby had rotated and was head down. Once she determined, mid-delivery, that he was not, Mrs. Wilson continued to deliver the full-term infant, pulling out his legs and abdomen. The midwife delivered his head an hour and 40 minutes after she'd asked about going to the hospital.

"If you had been told that Isaac could die by delivering him in your living room would you still have done it?" prosecutor Lisa Pellegrini asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Daley, who later delivered two of her three living children by uncertified midwives in Mercer County.

The trial resumes tomorrow. Mrs. Wilson was charged in 2004 but the trial was postponed repeatedly while various legal issues were resolved.