R.'s amazing birth story

R. called me early in the morning, asking me to come. She had been having contractions from the day before, and now they were about 5 minutes apart and getting harder to deal with.
I arrived at her house about 20 minutes later, and I noticed that she was still acting her good old self in between the contractions. That is usually a sign that the labor is still in the early stages.


R. was 39 weeks pregnant, and more than ready to have her baby. She wanted to have an all natural birth, and therefore chose to go to Hadassah Ein Karem. Part of the reason was also that that is the only Jerusalem hospital that allows full rooming in.

We got to the hospital at 10 am, and it was really crowded. I've already noticed that there's a baby boom going on at the moment. In any case, R. was greeted by a very friendly midwife who attached her to the monitor and did an internal check. She was already 2.5 cm dilated and the baby's head was nice and low.
After the monitor, we were told to wait outside for a delivery room to become available. There wasn't a free one at that moment, and of course there was no way of telling how much longer it was going to take. R. took it really well, and we all waited patiently. In the meantime the contractions were getting stronger which was a good sign of progress.

All in all we waited about 3 hours in the waiting room, and then we finally got a room. Luckily we got one that had just been remodeled, and it was brand new and nice. The midwife in charge checked her again, and she already progressed to 4 cm. That was really great!
R. got into the shower and sat on the ball while I shampooed her hair. She didn't want to stay in there for too long, so when it was time for another monitor check-up, she got dressed and went on the bed.

While she was on the monitor, the midwife checked her again, and now she had progressed to 5 cm. Nice! It was going really well for a first birth, and at a steady pace. It wasn't going extremely fast, but R. would not have been able to handle that either. Her body was giving her exactly the right pace that she could cope with.
Then, the doctor in charge came in. He introduced himself, and then looked at the computer screen which was showing R.'s progress in a nice graph. He asked: "She's only 5 cm, did her water break yet?" and when he was told no, he went on saying that he would call in the midwife to break her water, so her labor would speed up.

What the heck??????????????????

As soon as the doctor was out of the room, I told R. and her husband that there was no reason to want to speed up labor, that she was progressing really nicely on her own, and that the artificial rupture of membranes could bring complications that otherwise would not arise.
R. only wanted to know if breaking the water would make the pain go away, but I told her that the opposite often holds true. When the bag of water breaks, the head of the baby presses directly on the cervix without the water as a cushion. That usually brings stronger contractions that are often also more effective.

R. was finding it hard to cope with the contractions she was already having, and I was afraid that rupturing her membranes would come as a 'shock' for her body, giving her extra strong contractions at a point when she wouldn't be ready for them yet. Membranes always rupture spontaneously at some point during labor (or even the birth). Sometimes labor needs to be sped up for medical reasons, and then artificial rupture of membranes (AROM) can be beneficial. But in most cases, the body knows best when it's the best time for the membranes to rupture.

There was a change of shifts, and the new midwife was not in any hurry to speed up labor, no matter what the doctor said. He came in again, and generously 'allowed' R. to progress for another hour, after which he would start 'doing something'. He made it sound like R's labor wasn't progressing at all, while the opposite was true.

The new midwife checked R., and then her water broke spontaneously. Right away, the contractions started to pick up again, and became stronger. It became really hard for her to cope now, but the midwife and I both knew that it would go fast now.
R. needed the both of us next to her with every contraction, one to rub her lower back in circles, the other so R. could squeeze her hands. R. was feeling pressure already but she was nowhere ready to push, so concentrating on squeezing my hands in stead of on the very strong contractions really helped her a lot.

Our amazing midwife stayed with us the whole time, rubbing R.'s back, holding her hands, holding the monitor in place in order to get a good reading of the heartbeat, encouraging R., and answering any questions that any of us had.
I wish there were more midwives like her!! I realize that we were lucky that she was not taking care of another lady at the same time, or she would not have been able to stay with us the whole time.

Finally it was time to push, and R. pushed for nearly an hour. For the longest time, it was not sure if her perineum would stretch far enough in order to allow the head to come out without an episiotomy, but our fantastic midwife had all the patience in the world, and eventually a healthy 3200 gr baby boy was born. R. only had a tiny scratch!
He started crying right away, and he was so incredibly cute!

I have never seen such a great birth with such a fantastic midwife. The lights were dimmed, the music was playing softly, and we were speaking in low voices. There were (almost) no disruptions.
I wish that every birth would be like this!

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