Thursday, March 5, 2009

Two Extrordinary Birth Stories

Story #1:

First of all, congratulations to Nancy and Frank, from my class that just ended a few weeks ago. They were pregnant with baby #2, and very much like me, had an epidural with the first, got educated about birth after-the-fact, she became a doula, and wanted an unmedicated birth. She was planning a hospital birth and both her and her husband were very well prepared. She had all her plans in place. Her first baby arrived 3 weeks early, so she has been ready for quite some time, just in case. She had a doula, a babysitter for baby #1, even a sort of back-up doula, or shadow, to the first doula. Frank says she was supposed to be his doula.

Her water broke during the night, about 3:00 a.m., and by about 5:00 a.m. she realized that it was moving very fast. She called her doula who came right over. The shadow doula was on standby for someone else and had another birth to be at by 7:00, and since it would likely be many hours, she didn't go to their house.

It wasn't long before Nancy was making pushing sounds, grunting and the like. At this point, they were waiting for the babysitter to get there when the doula told her that she had two options. 1) Call an ambulance and have the baby at home, or 2) Call a midwife the doula worked with and have the baby at home. Thankfully, she chose the midwife.

The baby boy was born 20 minutes after the midwife arrived. He weighed 9 lbs. 9 ounces and was 21 1/2 inches long. And she did not tear! (I know I promised that the next post would be about the "big" baby, but I had to share these stories. I will be bringing this story back up though.)

A few things to point out about this birth: had they called the ambulance, they would have treated her birth as an emergency, clamping the cord immediately and still rushing her to the hospital afterwards. There would have been lots of "drama," as I call it.

With the midwife, it was just a normal birth. At least as normal as an unplanned homebirth can be! Their pediatrician, however, was freaking out. He wanted the baby and mother to check themselves into the hospital. Can you imagine?! He totally dismissed the midwife's credibility, education and knowledge in checking the mom and baby out.

Another concern is her doctor's office will now use this story to scare women into induction, telling them that they certainly don't want this (awful) thing to happen to them. It's better to be induced in the safety of the hospital. Can't you just hear it now? In their eyes, she was "lucky" that things turned out so well, as it could have been a dangerous situation, especially with a big baby and all the possible birth trauma.

Isn't that what all homebirthers hear from all the naysayers? That we are "lucky" that nothing went wrong. I just love that.

Anyway, I was thrilled with their story. This was a full Bradley class, with 8 couples. So far, we've had 3 wonderful homebirths, 1 unmedicated hospital birth, and one unfortunate C-section (failed induction). No one else is planning a homebirth, but after such an inspiring story, who knows (!!)...

Story #2:

I have a friend who, after 8 years of infertility treatments, started down the road of adoption. They adopted a baby boy, now 9 years old, followed by two beautiful girls, now ages 5 and 3. Just when my friend started wondering if she was going through menopause early, she found out she was pregnant! After 16 years of not being able to get pregnant, can you imagine the shock? That story gives such hope. I am so happy for them. They have a beautiful family. Just goes to show, those kids are meant to be a part of their family, and they wouldn't be had the infertility treatments worked. Congratulations Angie and Mark.




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