News from the Birth Zone

Hello Again...would you like to know what i have been doing for the last 48 hours? Sure you do! I have been sleeping on floors, hanging out in hospitals, playing with nipples and getting bitten by mosquitos...what have you been doing? I have to tell you what a real honor it is to be allowed into the lives of these families. Birth is such an intimate experience for the couple that I feel humbled every time I am allowed into the circle.
I had the honor of being asked to attend a home birth, away from the clinic, with Ibu Robin, the founder of the clinic. We were attending to Patricia and Roberto, the cutest couple! She is from Singapore and he is from Italy. To make a long story short I will fill you in on a new theory I have developed: Asian women need to be careful when they marry tall, hulking, broad shouldered, big-headed, heavy-set white men and want to bear their children!!! We labored at home for 30 hours, all the while a champion baby chugged along happy as a clam. I was at the home for 24 hours. I slept in the same bed with the couple and on their floor, shared meals with them, showered and made tea. All the while working on keeping this labor cooking and mama/baby happy. It later became evident that this baby was just not going to come down any farther and mama was exhausted, we decided to go to the hospital before baby became exhausted. This little guy (pics soon:) was NO little guy! 4.5 kilos!!! Our special super Doc, Dr. Widegama performed a cesarean to reveal a super tanker of a baby with the head and shoulders of a linebacker! The baby's head was not molding at all, so not only was he big, he was hard-headed.
Three of us ladies from the birth team attended the family in the hospital because you have to keep a constant eye on things at the hospital around here. They will give the baby a bottle just because the baby was born by cesarean...which is no valid reason at all. Mama Patricia was so relieved and papa Roberto could not stop kissing Antonio, who loved the attention despite papa's whiskers. Mama definitely earned this one! This was one of the most interesting labors
I have ever been exposed to. Her labor literally stopped for 7 hours during the second day of labor. I mean it just stopped when she was 8 centimeters! She slept, showered, ate a full breakfast, joked around with us. Then we called in Dr. John, the acupuncturist, in the afternoon who expertly got labor restarted in under an hour and were back in action. (Working at this clinic has taught me so much about acupuncture. I really have a newfound belief in its capabilities.) Labor resumed and we got to 10 cm, mama pushed for hours and the baby would not descend. So we found ourselves at Clinic Mas or the Rumah Sakit (Pain Rooms) for a consult with Dr. Widegama that resulted in the c-section.
Very educational. Learning to work with what the body provides, and not against it is a crucial aspect of midwifery that I love. My time here has been a valuable lesson in listening to the signals the body gives you and not ignoring them.
That beautiful birth occured after a bit of a lull around here, I had just spent the day baking dozens of cookies for the Earth Day Celebration that was held on April 19. Of course, I missed Earth Day because of the birth...but of course I didn't mind! After all, I am a birth junkie who needs to get her fix! The energy is truly contagious. Although, I was talking with Robin about how intense it is to be around all of this birth energy all the time. She is headed to Italy for a month in June, getting away from the clinic should be therapeutic. Being around new life is invigorating, and the joy is contagious and you would think that that would make you happy all the time...however, it can be incredibly depleting and draining. Interesting to think that part of the training to become an excellent midwife could be to be around so much birth, all the time, so as to actually become immune to the intensity of birth so that you can always perform calmly and without volatility during emergencies. It will be such a luxury to come back home and focus on my small client base, one birth at a time. Unlike today, when I kept wondering which birth I was going to miss because I was in the other room. I had another 16 year old mama today. Sorry to all my thirty something mamas out there...another 6 hour labor and 20 minutes of pushing! Although, Robin and I missed another homebirth because we were so tied up at the long one where a student midwife had to catch the baby because he came so quickly. This 37 year old mama went from 1cm to birth in 3 hours! Another testament to the power of acupuncture because she had a lot of acupuncture done to stimulate the onset of labor because she was over her due date. Who knows? The nice thing about acupuncture is that why not try it...there are virtually no side negative effects! Gotta post...battery running low...ciao!