Friday, July 20, 2007

Who Will Be The One?

"You will be the one", that is the most commonly used phrase at the clinic...a labor comes in and we patiently wait for the Midwives queue to invite us to handle the birth. Now you may think that we work at the clinic so it is obvious that we get to handle births every time a mom comes in but the truth is we cant assume anything...if i have learned one thing it is that you cant just assume that it is okay that we handle a birth with every midwife, we cant assume that every mom is okay with a Midwife student handling her birth. so we wait....we wait for one of the Filipina midwifes to meekly approach us and say..."you will be the one"...and so it is just that....we will be the one...
This week i was the one for two births...the first birth was quite the gong show, the mom was the sweetest thing on the planet...and at 9cm she was walking around having full conversations and so was her two aunts, mother, husband, myself, mia, Kayla, and lets throw in a few more just for fun....all crammed in this tiny little room...finally Mary Joy reached pushing stage and her mother phones her dad on there cell phone and puts the phone up to her in distressed daughter's ear...at that point i knew that this would be a crowded birth. now the mom at this point is fully dilated and ready to deliver but her contractions were just not strong enough to push out the babe...so another midwife comes into the birth room that was already busting from the seems with people, with a baby from a mother who had just given birth hours prior in the room next-door, she comes in and has Mary Joy breastfeed this new baby to help her contractions get stronger....like i said Gong Show...typically breastfeeding will induce stronger contractions, but this mom was a first time mother, and had obviously never breastfed before. so instead of inducing stronger contractions the mother became very enthralled with this little baby girl and in result stalled contractions altogether. after some position changing and some patience the baby was born and welcomed into the world by everyone and there mother...overall the birth was a little crowded but good.

Mary Joy and new little M.J.

Rowean and I trying out the new sling

3 comments:

Tami Michel said...

I loved this story, it made me laugh at the visual you give. Is this "the" sling? If so I love it!!

Kayla said...

Alex you are a great midwife and handled the whole Gong show like a professional. I think we have realized life is a gong show most of the time! Thanks for keeping us laughing along the way!

Lindsey said...

alex, i can totally picture it! you're amazing!