Beautiful birth

Had a beautiful birth the other day. This was a gravida 2 para 1 lady that I had been seeing since about 20 weeks. She and her husband are just the sweetest people. She had been struggling with a lot of prodromal labor. We had also been following her closely throughout her pregnancy because of a history of preterm labor and birth. I told her that if she made it to term she would probably go overdue! Seems like if a woman makes it to term that will inevitably be what happens :p

She went into the office for a labor check and was 5cm dilated so the midwife sent her over to me. The funny thing is she was scheduled for induction of labor that evening. She would have been put on hold since L&D was so busy. Anyway, she came over and wanted to walk for awhile so she did that. After about half an hour she wanted to try the whirlpool but didn't really like that. That was a surprise as most women enjoy the tub during labor. She tried the birth ball but didn't get as good of relief as she did with just sitting on the toilet. But she was embarrassed to sit on the toilet. I told her to go for it if that's what worked for her. So she's sitting on the toilet for awhile when she tells me she needs to be push and wants to be checked. So I check her and she just has an anterior lip (this is a way of saying she's 9.5cm) but really needs to push. So I try to break her water but can't quit snag the membranes - must have been the bag of steel! But it popped on its own a minute later. The lip went away and she pushed. She really was very well focused and delivered her son a few minutes later with just a small tear. She did such an amazing job. All told, she was at the hospital for only an hour and a half.

It's kinda funny because there was another lady scheduled for induction who came in during the night in labor. This lady delivered four minutes after the other one. Needless to say I missed the delivery but got to do the placenta - woohoo. Then she's apologizing to me for not being able to stop delivering until I got there (we had a family practice resident who caught the baby)! I told her not to apologize - she had to do what her body was telling her to do! I just think that's funny that sometimes women will apologize for delivering before you can get there.