I got the call at 6 a.m. as I was getting kennady ready for the bus.
Illysa called me and said that she had been at a birth since yesterday evening and her other assistant couldn’t return.
So I gladly accepted and packed up my bags.
I got to the parent’s home around 7 a.m.
Mom was in early labor still and had been laboring since 5 p.m. the evening before.
I got the job of timing contractions to check for any increase in strength or length.
The contractions stayed about the same for several hours.
Midday Illysa checked the mama and found her to be at about 4 cm and the baby was poorly positioned.
The mother and father decided to try the Rebozo technique.
After the Rebozo technique we monitored the baby for 2 full minutes with the doppler to make sure there were not any changes in the heart tones.
About lunch time mom had still not had any significant change in her labor pattern.
Illysa felt strongly that mama needed to labor alone for a while to be able to get past this point.
We packed up a few essentials and went to do a 3 day postpartum visit.
We returned about 2 hours late to find mama had progressed. Her contractions seemed to be getting a little closer together.
The husband turned on some music and we all danced. I have to say that it was my first dance at a birth and it was great for lifting everyone’s spirit.
By 6 p.m. the mama had progressed to 6 cm. YAY!
There was a renewed sense of hope and expectation of a baby being born this day.
After 5 more hours and lots and lots of hard work by mama and father and a very short amount of pushing
the new baby girl was born into the water and into her parents arms at 11:24 p.m.
The new baby girl had done a lot of work to get here along with her mama and needed a few rescue breaths to get her going, but did perfect after that.
It was a birth that was the perfect example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
This labor would have ended up in a c-section in a hospital, but given time and encouragement and careful monitoring of mama and baby, she was born at home in the arms of her parents with no interventions.
I left their home at 12:24 a.m. and gratefully crawled into bed at 1:30 a.m. with a lot of joy in my heart.
