Today I stepped in a pile of poop and then tracked it all the way around the hospital bed before I realized it. It was really very classy.
With in minutes of arriving, my doula friend and I each stopped to talk to a couple of laboring women. With in a few more minutes, there were 2 baby heads emerging. (from 2 different women, not the same one - in case you were worried.) The race was on! Two first time moms yelling, "It's coming!" The foot of their beds had only about 10 feet between them.
Anya's baby was coming, but slowly. She was pushing well and just wanted a hand to hold and someone to give her sips of water. She had been completely alone for many hours.
Julie was HIV positive and her bag of waters was still intact. Her baby was coming very quickly! Before I knew it, the baby's head, inside the water bag was completely out. It was soon followed by the rest of the baby girl. She splashed into this world as she slipped onto the bed and her water cushion broke simultaneously. What a blessing that she was protected from the vaginal fluids on her way out. I didn't get to hear if she was born HIV positive or not.
Meanwhile, Anya kept pushing. She gently delivered a baby girl about 10 minutes later. No tears, even thought the baby was delivered with a fist by her cheek. It was a very peaceful birth.
The entire rest of the day was spent with Mikal. She was also there to meet her first child. She dilated quickly, but once she hit 10 centimeters, she grinned at us and basically fell asleep for three hours. For awhile we encouraged her into a position that would move the second stage of labor along, but she was just not into it, so we let her sleep. Eventually she awoke, crawled down off the bed, and squatted noisily. The grunts became screams and I guessed that she was crowning. Sure enough a peek proved my suspicions were true. Within the next few minutes, a tiny,. white, lifeless little baby boy emerged.
After about 20 minutes of prayer, oxygen, and CPR, he was breathing, struggling...but breathing. At that point we all breathed a sigh of relief. I'm glad he wasn't one of the majority of babies in the county who are born out in the jungle and left for dead if they do not breathe immediately on their own. The midwives did a great job on that one.
In the end, everybody was doing great...and we headed home after another awesome day of loving the women God loves.
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