What an amazing day - Here comes baby M

I've joked to several clients that I'm a "speedy" doula. Most of my births have been around the 4 hour mark, give or take a few hours. However, I knew that a long one would happen, it was only a matter of time.

Baby M was my first overnighter. I arrived at the hospital at 6pm, about 6 hours after the induction began. The mom really didn't want pain medication, though we talked a lot about how pitocin is generally pretty darn painful. But since she wanted to wait, I didn't push - instead we worked through each contraction with positioning, massage and lots of encouragement. Progress was slow and around midnight she decided to get an epidural. And that's when things began to really progress. I'm so thankful for medication and what it can do! Also, when you decide to induce with medication, it's very hard not to need medication to get through it. And our ultimate goal was a VBAC - so again, we had to keep that in mind.

After we were settled, we rested through the night (the best you can in a hospital, anyway!) Around 7am she was complete! We waited to labor the baby down and do a little practice pushing. At 8:30am we noticed some odd swelling on the sides of mom's head. The doctors (and staff, and me!) were completely baffled - but decided to err on the side of caution. So, to help mom push without putting too much stress on her head (the swelling increased with pushing), they used a vacuum extractor. At 10:15 and after two strong pushes, baby girl M was born - gorgeous and hollering!

Dad was brilliant, holding her right away and singing her a beautiful melody. Mom did a great job and accomplished so much in those 24 hours of labor! Thankfully the swelling subsided as soon as labor was complete, nursing was established in record time and a few hours later I left the happy family on a crisp and snowy October 10th!

Happy birthday, baby M!