Last Birth

For a while anyway. My client finally had her baby Saturday. By the way, this is long. She had called several times in the days before and was having prelabor. Then on Friday night, she thought she was in labor and called me, but then before I left, called back and said she didn't need me. I did get the call to come a little after 6am Saturday. I did go a little earlier to this labor than I normally do because this was a single mom. I was her only support. I went and sat with her until the kids woke up and then got them breakfast and dressed. I was trying to handle what they needed so the mom could labor. Their great-grandmother came and got them mid-morning. I ran my client a bath and she stayed in there quite a while. She was having contractions, but what a saw was about 10 minutes apart and she was not making noise or seeming to be in too much pain. She said they were hard, but I just didn't think she was very far along. She called the Dr. and the on-call did not think she was ready to go to the hospital yet, but she really wanted to so we got ready. She said she was ready for some pain medication. It still took an hour to get everything ready and in the car. I drover her there and we got there about 2pm. When she got in and they checked her, she was 7 cm. I was shocked. Apparently she was just handling everything very well. We were both very excited and this renewed her wants of going naturally. We got checked into a room and her Dr. came and she was 8cm before too long. I'm thinking this baby will be born within 1-2 hours. Then she gets to 8.5 and stays there.
I'm going to pause here to tell you what she was like in labor. She did not want to be touched and for the most part she wanted it quiet. Also, she wanted to lay down most of the time, so my suggestions of being active were all turned down. All this was fine with me, because I am there for whatever the woman's needs are. I would forget every now and then and touch her and she would shake me off. She wanted and needed me there, but she mostly just wanted to handle the labor by herself. As a doula, the work itself was easy- I did not spend hours massaging her back or holding her up.
Back to the story, so she stays at 8.5 for several hours and the nurses and Dr. come in more often and monitor her more often, both of which starts to bother her, because she just wants to be left alone by everyone. Finally, her dilation goes back to an 8. You may think this is impossible, but I had read about this in books and now I have seen this happen twice this year. When you have people (nurse, Drs) who are coming in often to "interrupt" you and who are giving you discouraging news instead of encouraging you, this can easily happen. Finally, it is getting late 8pm and the Dr says you have to do something. She agrees to an epidural. It is in by 9pm. She cried after it was in, because she had really thought she could go natural and wanted to. I told her she had been very successful and we can't control the labor we are dealt. Within an hour she was complete, so the epi did help her. She pushed the baby out fairly quickly and he was born just after 10pm. He came out with his hand next to his head so I don't know if this helped cause the stall at 8 or not?
He came out healthy and nursed right away and well. I stayed and helped her get settled into recovery. I was with her for 3 hours after the baby was born which I normally don't do, but I didn't want to leave her alone. When her sister came back at 1am (she was there for the last hour of labor), I finally left to go home. I was with her a total of 19 hours. I think that is my longest labor yet, but I knew I signed on for that too. I'm just glad I get a break now.
On Sunday morning, I taught preschool bible class, tried to stay awake during worship, we grabbed a quick bite afterwards. I then went home and slept for a couple of hours. Did I also mention I started getting a cold on Friday? Thankfully, it didn't bother me during the labor except needing a drink when my throat was dry, but it did come in on Sunday. I slept 10 hours last night and finally feel a bit more myself today. I'm glad I attended the labor and I hope it was a positive experience for the mother, but I am so glad to not have to do one for a while. At least not for 8-9 more weeks! :)