Her water broke at 7am, and she called me, her doula, immediately. When I got to the hospital at 11, she wasn’t yet having contractions, and nurses and doctor agreed she could go home. Thank goodness! I massaged her in her bed for a while, and she fell asleep, so I went home too.
Doctor wanted her back at 7pm, so I met them at the hospital again, and she was having dinner when I arrived, still no regular contractions. We watched silly TV shows, laughing, and walked a bit. Around 9:30, her husband and I got serious about spleen 6 and GB 21, ankle and shoulder points. I said, “On the number, every five minutes, we’ll press and you can invite the contractions to come.“ For the next 90 minutes we did, and they came right on time, every time except when the doctor or nurse came in to check on her and talk with her. I've seen it happen like that before but it always amazes me how this works.
About 11:00, things started to get intense. Her cervix was checked around 11:30 and she was at 2 ½ cm. We moved her candles into the room with the birthing tub, and she spent about an hour in there, soaking and feeling the contractions intensely. It seemed to relax her at first, but she was feeling it strongly, and very uncomfortable.The nurse suggested she get out when she wasn’t handling things very calmly. She went back to her room, and laid on the bed, wanting very firm pressure on her sacrum, and starting to ask about drugs and beg god for help. She threw up and then was asking clearly for something to take away the pain. The nurse was hesitant about giving her drugs, since she had in her birth plan preference for a natural birth, but I was expecting it. She had spoken about her past birth experience and mentioned what a relief that brought. She attributed the drugs to getting her through the labor, but she adamently was opposed to an epidural. I understood that although she was very wary of the medical world's tests and procedures, she chose a hospital birth over a home birth because of the option of having something to ease the pain.
She was checked again, and I wondered if she had progressed a great deal, and thats why things were so painful for her, but she was 3 ½ cm. She got a shot of Fentanyl, which made her a little loopy, but she complained that it didn’t take the pain away. The nurse and I were thinking the same thing, trying to get her on hands and knees to rock her belly in the rebozo, which she liked at first, but the position was intense, and she wanted to lie down. We were thinking that her baby was in an occiput posterior position, and we wanted to help the baby to turn, so things could go easier. She was asking for more drugs, but had to wait an hour and a half after the first dose, which she got around 1:00. She sat on the toilet a while, needing intense pressure on her back to manage the contractions. When she got up, the nurse came in a said one of the other nurses had mentioned the belly lifting technique in the rebozo… I tried it with my hands.
This was the incredible thing that happened. I stood behind her, and during her contraction, I wrapped my arms around her belly and lifted that baby up out of her pelvis. It was intense and painful fro her, and I felt that baby move! She collapsed onto the bed and with her next contraction was telling us she had to poop! She was complete and ready to push her baby out, just like that. The doctor rushed in, because the baby’s heart tones were dropping as she passed through the birth canal, and she summoned her power and pushed that baby out in just a few minutes. Totally Incredible.
