It was her third baby and first home birth and she had created a beautiful warm cave for herself in her bedroom. Dim lights. Birth pool. Candles. Lovely burning oils. Hypnobirthing cd playing in the background. Safe and warm and cosy.
But labour had slowed down since she had gotten to fully dilated and we waited patiently for labour to pick up again. And it just didn’t.
And so the difficult decision was made to move to the nearby hospital to seek assistance.
I packed the car while Marianne stayed with the labouring mother and once we were ready to go, we made the slow shuffle across the much colder and starker open plan kitchen/dining area/sitting room to the front door. The slow shuffle of a labouring woman. A few slow steps forward and then stop to swing her hips as a contraction surges through her.
After a few steps, the baby’s head was suddenly on her perineum.
BOOM!
Plans changed…baby was going to be born on the kitchen floor.
I ran to get our equipment out of the car again and then knelt down behind the mother who was standing and rocking her hips.
Marianne and I sat, to the back and either side of the mother, averting our eyes so as not to make the mother feel observed, waiting for the head to emerge.
But then out of the corner of my eye I saw the entire baby shoot out of her mother in one big push. Reflexes I didn’t know I had dived to catch the baby, centimetres before she hit the floor.
Old classmates will attest to the fact that I was no good at catching balls at school.
But catching babies…well…I think this particular birth was certainly an initiation of sorts.
