Birth is Amazing

I have been to 2 homebirths in the past 2 weeks and I am once again amazed at how strong women are, how support from others is VITAL during birth, and how babies enter the world. Both times I got choked up as the mammas were near the end of pushing out their babies.

The most recent birth was a mamma to 4 kiddos, pregnant with her 5th. She worked long and hard to have her sweet baby. I was at her house for almost 48 hours. Too bad I'm not paid by the hour :). It was a lesson for me about patience during a long labor. I can understand why hospitals are more likely to meddle in a slow going birth. This mamma would have had quite a bit of intervention to have her baby sooner had she been in the hospital. Even though it was slow, both her and the baby were strong and healthy. One of the sweetest things about the birth was that the family are strong in their faith and when the baby was born, everyone was crying and praising the Lord after such a long and tedious labor. The oldest child was in the room when the baby was born and she was blown away by the birth of her new baby brother. She cried quite a bit and thought it was beautiful. All the other siblings were outside the door waiting to pop in after the birth to meet their newest sibling.

I am feeling more comfortable with my responsibilities as an assistant now and am better able to anticipate the needs of the midwife. It is a lot of on the job training.

I have learned something new at all 3 births I have been to and I am thankful for this experience. The midwife I work for is probably not going to take very many, if any, new clients. That makes me sad--but this whole thing came to be out of God's timing so I think that He must have some other things in store for me. The midwife asked me what I see my future is in birth work. I'm not sure--I would LOVE to keep being an assistant should any other doors open up for me. And I will keep teaching birth classes. I am planning on being a doula/back up coach to one of the couples in my latest series, so maybe doula is in my future too.

Maybe I'll have another blog someday about my tales as a birth junkie.