Quickie

Today is a good day. I am excited to be going to see a talk with Carl Bigheart this evening. He is just a wonderful man who works to create bridges between ancient wisdom traditions and healing of the relationship between human kind and all other beings. My dear friend Nat is organizing this talk, and I want to be there tonight not just to hear Carl speak, but to support her too.

I was nervous when I woke up this morning and discovered I was still in my bed. I had been expecting my lady with broken waters to give birth, as those waters had been broken for quite a long time. She was in contact with her doctor, so everything was fine.

She decided to go into the hospital to get checked out, and I was just so scared I would miss the talk. I had planned to send a backup for a few hours if someone went into labour and needed me during the talk, but it's another thing to leave a mother in active labour...something only an emergency would motivate me to do.

I arrived at the hospital and my client was in tears because she really hadn't wanted any sort of intervention, and here they were, discussing induction. She had already tried homeopathics, herbs, acupressure, and castor oil, to no avail. The doctor was way out of her comfort zone, and was pretty insistent, in a nice way, about getting the labour moving. She checked my client and found her cervix really nice and stretchy and dilated, and assured her that a drop of synto would get her going, and that once her body took over, she could stop the medication, and let labour progress on its own. My client begged just to be able to walk up and down the stairs for 20 minutes. I didn't think that would do much at this point, but then the doctor found there to be still a pocket of amniotic fluid, which she broke. We thought that maybe with that plus a walk, things would start. Remember,trust the woman.

We went to the stairwell, and I encouraged her to walk up sideways, 2 at a time, as I thought her baby was curled up pretty far on her right side. She began gentle contractions. Every time she had one, she squatted down. As it got stronger, she leaned over, looking out a window, and circled her hips. People passed us on the stairs and weren't sure what was going on, but they didn't bug us. A few contractions later she was really working up a sweat, making some noise, and making big, beautiful hip circles. Instead of chatting between, we were quiet, honouring her trip to labour land. And one contraction or two later, she made the noises that made us realize it was time go get back into her room NOW. As we ran by her doctor, we grabbed her and told her the baby was coming. She was surprised, but very very happy.

A nice big boy, nearly 9 pounds, was born less than 20 minutes later, just an hour after the doctor had broken the last bit of bulging membranes.

What is even happier about this story, is that the mothers' first birth had been nearly 2 days long with forceps. This baby practically fell out, nearly a pound bigger than his elder sibling. We are all over the moon for her.

So,even though I've just been contacted by an other client telling me she is having some contractions, I'm pretty sure we're in the clear for the talk tonight! I can't wait!

Happy Saturday, everyone!
Lesley