Right on time!

Birth 6

The call came in around 3 am Friday morning. “Jaleesa, its Milena, we are heading out now. See you soon.” I jumped out of bed, in excitement; if all things go smoothly I would finally get to see a homebirth. Once again, I saw a direct answer to prayer. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I do not like the thought of missing classes and it takes me a good 24 hours to recoup from being up all night at a birth.

Prior to the birth, I spoke to the team and mentioned that I was going to pray that this mother goes into labor sometime Thursday afternoon and have her baby before the weekend starts. However, after speaking with the team of my thoughts there arose a conflict. Edna (the midwife) needed to pick a family member up from the airport Thursday evening. So the prayer changed, “Father, if it is according to your will, may this mother go in to labor early Friday morning and may she have the baby Friday morning as well in Jesus name, amen.”

Upon arrival, there was a lot going on. Everything happened rapidly, we were only there for an hour before the baby came. The husband was running to get the tub filled with hot water and the mother was definitely feeling the pain of labor. I went to her side to assist with different comfort measures. Some positions worked, some didn’t. The midwife stepped in and assisted her with additional things to deal with the pressure she was feeling, such as walking around and pushing. Finally, her water broke, the tub was now ready and soon after she got in, baby boy was born.

Home-births require you to multi-task. Most of my previous births have been in a hospital so I am not typically as hands-on with the gathering of supplies and clean-up. However, this birth was different, as mentioned before, we were trying to get the tub ready for mom and as delivery became imminent, I soon became the runner for hot water so that dad could be there with the birthing mother. Gathering the warm towel, checking to see if post delivery supplies were ready and the clean-up, showed me how “spoiled” I have been as a hospital doula. Thank you labor and delivery nurses for all you do!

A few lessons I learned is that water birth has different complications that I would want my mother to be aware of. I also learned that the peace and confidence of the midwife plays an important role in the atmosphere for the birth. In the midst of it all, the labor was calm; the midwife used the intensity, duration, and intervals of contractions, the location or the FHT (fetal heart tones) and the observation of the mother to guide her on when the best time was for the mother to push.

What I find interesting is that most of the topics and skills we learned in that week during class, we were able to use or see done at this birth and if the baby came earlier or even on his due date we would not have covered those skills in class. It amazes me how much my God is interested in my education as a midwife. Isaiah 54:13 says “and all thy children {shall be} taught of the Lord.”