Firsts.......

I wanted to share my lovely first birth which I attended last Wednesday evening. This was by far one of the coolest things I have ever done. I loved it. It happened during the worst part of my day – yes we all heard about it, the day; the hour the poop was gushing out of the toilet downstairs in the office. My pager went off and I responded to find the Doula Co-coordinator on the other line. She had a woman whose water broke and wanted a Doula at the hospital. “Can you go?” she asks me. “Ha” I laughed “hey I’m dealing with human bodily functions anyways why not!” Scary. I got there at about 7pm and she was 3 cm and progressing quickly. She’s young and this was her second baby (which means they usually go quicker). What struck me was this woman’s beauty – she was radiant. I felt drawn to her in a strange peaceful way. Her body knew what it was doing and all she had to do was let her body lead her. It was a bit more complicated as she had a past where her last baby died in labour of unknown complications so she was being monitored quite closely; which meant the baby was being monitored and she was not moving around much. She was so overwhelmed and I imagine a bit fearful. I found she liked her arm stroked a certain way and didn’t want to be asked questions – just do it! That’s what I felt like my job was. Try it and hey if it doesn’t work she’ll tell you to stop and probably forget about it the next contraction.
The doctor was concerned at her babies dipping heart rate (every contraction) so they did some tests on the babies blood which came back great. The doctor came in at 9:30 and she was 9cm – whoa for those of you unaware that is huge – like we are talking usually hours and hours of labour to get to that point. So they call in the doctor and we go through all the instructions. “don’t push” “just breathe”. We do this for awhile. She tried to get up to go to the bathroom but feels a lot of burning down there so we get her back on the bed and the doctor comes in for a look. “ok time to push” Can I step in here and say INTENSE but so beautiful. She was working so hard for this baby. No medication, she threw the gas tube at the nurse when she tried to make her use it. Tough girl. Good girl. I kept eye contact with her and we breathed through each painful contraction.
So she gets all the way to pushing and there is a pretty thick anterior lip of the cervix - the babies’ heart rate drops quite low and she is bleeding a lot - and then its panic mode. I felt so bad for her - there were like 8 people in the room; they are making her move from side to side to excite the baby. The anesthesiologist comes in and its kind of amusing now thinking back, he has to ask her all these questions right – any loose teeth? Any back problems? The poor girl is just trying to get through her contractions. She says “What teeth”.
It’s quick after this because they whisk her away to surgery. The heavy bleeding was a strong indicator that her placenta was already detaching and with her past complications no one was ready to take chances.
About 45 minutes later we got to lay eyes on a beautiful dark eyed screaming baby boy who weighed in at 6lbs10oz.
What a beautiful way to spend an evening.

As I drove home that night I smiled and felt such peace. I felt honoured that I was able to see the beauty on her face as she chose life for this baby. Her strength and courage are why I want to be at birth. In my lack of enthusiasm and joy lately it was nice and I even caught a glimpse of God – arms full of babies, tears running down His face. He was happy too.