One birth in December that I was a part of from start to finish. That's all. And is just happened the other day.
It was a really great birth in retrospect. Healthy baby, healthy mommy, mommy very proud of her hard work, new papa pleased with the situation, etc. However in the moment, there were some challenges!
First, there was the grandmother of this new person. She was VERY nervous about this whole out-of-hospital thing. When I met her, she said something like, "She's really sick" in regards to her daughter puking her guts out. As a midwife who has attended 45 previous births in a midwife role and over 20 before that as a doula, I responded with, "This is really normal during labor," as I know it is. Not fun, but most bodily fluids make an appearance in most births. Wow, I got a look that would have killed. Nice to meet you, too, Grandma.
I KNOW she was really nervous, and I give her credit for being as supportive as she was throughout the labor, and afterwards, she did tell me, "You ladies are amazing." But some of her other lines included:
"No-one pushes this long!" After 90 minutes of pushing for a primip. Normal.
"Honey, maybe you need a doctor!" This was the only one that offended me personally, a little.
"Did she tell you how difficult my first birth was?"
I'm sure there were more. And truthfully, I really would have been happy to talk with her about her concerns, fears, worries - and I did, when I could - OUTSIDE THE BIRTHING ROOM. My biggest concern is that she would get into her daughter's head and ruin her labor. Slow it down. Make her give up. Get her worried . . . and she was already working harder than she'd ever worked in her life.
But the real point here is that most of us don't get the opportunity to see birth in a natural way. Birth is "supposed" to be in a hospital. It is on TV, right? It's where most of us were born. It's where there are doctors and nurses to come to the rescue at any moment. Especially those anesthesiologists! So most of us cannot fall back on anything familiar when we see a birth for the first time. It can be very stressful when we love the person who is laboring. She is in pain! She is moaning, uncomfortable, miserable, and talking about wanting an epidural or that she can't do it anymore, etc. But I know that all of these things are normal and okay. As long as the baby is okay, and there are no health concerns, I push these momma's to keep going, keep trying, think of only one contraction at a time. And most of these ladies are thrilled after-the-fact with what they have accomplished.
And you know what? There's good research that these momma's feel more confident as new mothers. Awesome, right?
So in the end, this grandmother learned something amazing, and she'll probably process it and remember it for her whole life. Hopefully, she'll tell her friends about it too, so that it doesn't seem quite as strange or crazy as they might think. Maybe.
