Doula Gone Wild!

And baby number 5 is a ...GIRL!

I got up yesterday thinking that I really needed to rest today. The flu that Ivy has finally got to the rest of us. dh feels like crap. I feel like crap..and go figure.. Ivy is feeling better. I'm not sure if that's better or worse! lol

So I sit down at the computer like I do every morning with my coffee (cause I have no life) and one of the moms IM's me. She's not due for another 3 weeks but she's been having pains she says. This girl is 16 years old and stubborn as hell. It was hard to talk with her because she has this shell she puts up so people think she's tough. She would have sat there all night on the IM telling me she's fine when she wasn't. So I had to do a little detective work. Asking her how she was, and then reading into her responses. She was having contractions, but the thing is.. we were trying to tell whether they were Braxton Hicks or if they were early labor contractions. She can't tell. I'm not there. The midwife is over an hour away. Finally I email the midwife and tell her that my gut says this girl is in early labor. Her contractions were in her lower back and not so much in the front. That to me says "labor!".

The midwife writes back for me to find out if she's in pain or not. This is not an easy thing, for reasons I've already stated. First I decide to breathe with the girl through a contraction. I acted how I thought she would be acting really, not how she *says* the pain is. She maintained that the pain was only a 2 on a scale of 1-10.. but that my breathing with her did help. (clue) I told her that I thought the pain was more a 3 or 4. She said, "Okay." (clue) As more time passed she got more quiet in her messages to me. They came more infrequent, and never during a contraction. First 7 minutes apart, and now down to 3 minutes apart. This was defiantly the real thing. I emailed the midwife and told her to head on over. About an hour 1/2 later the girls water broke, just minutes before the midwife showed up. Shortly afterwards she was pushing. It was a long 2 hours of pushing. (for both of us) My husband also had a long day because he had to take Ivy into the other room to play. (over the gate) because she was being an attention hog. Its hard to push and breathe when a baby is climbing in your lap.

Finally the baby's head was born. We pushed together for about 15 minutes. Way too long for just the body to come out. The midwife said the shoulders were stuck. Things started getting frantic, and they were trying to get the mom to put her fingers in her vagina at the bottom and pull down while she was pushing. The students (in training) would push on the moms belly, and the midwife would try to corkscrew the baby around so the shoulder would get unstuck. The mom wasn't doing it, so I had to show her how. Quick second thinking in a moment of an emergency, and I didn't have to think twice. Now my boobs have been on the camera before, showing new moms how to breastfeed, but never anything else...ya know? I do my "birthing" in a long tee-shirt and undies. But I whipped the undies to the side and showed the mom how to put her fingers there and push at the same time. Luckily the baby was out in one long push! I was a bit worried, because I know it needed medical attention just to be sure.

The midwife wrote me this morning and told me the baby is absolutely fine and it was a great job. That's boys=1 and girls=4 Girls in the lead! ;-)

Now, I am totally feeling like shit. The flu has hit me hard and I'm hoping I'll have a few days to get better before the next one. I cannot believe I've helped deliver 3 babies in less than a week! THREE!! That just blows me away. If this keeps up I'm going to need an office with a birthing bed in it! Hahah! That would look kinda funny. lol