If you ask anyone in the military they will tell you that it's all just a game of hurry up and wait, and I have found that midwifery is exactly the same. Now I'm not comparing being a midwife to being a soldier, I just liked that they both start with the letter M, which also happens to be my first initial and my favorite letter. :) Now on to the story...
On Thursday November 21st I got off work, checked my phone, and found 6 missed calls, a new voice mail, and several text messages, all from Mom and Dad. Whoops! I called Mom back to find out what was going on, turns out that she was on her way to pick up some extra equipment from the cottage in Mississippi when she had a blowout!! Thankfully Dad was able to go rescue her because shortly after he got to where she was the call came in that our Mother To Be (Hence forth MTB) was having contractions three hours away. At this point I'm still in Alabama so I pulled up the GPS on my phone to find the routes that we could take that would meetup somewhere so that we didn't have to take two cars all the way to the birth. After confirming the routes with Mom I got on the road, and an hour and a half later we met up and left her car in a parking lot.
Now comes the hurry part! On my way to the rendezvous I was only driving 80mph, but after I picked up Mom, and her bag of instruments that would legitimize our speeding if we were pulled over, I bumped it up to around 85-90mph. Well when we were 50 miles from our destination the MTB calls to tell us that her water has just broken!! After that I floored it!! At one point I was doing 105mph!! And I'm not gonna lie, it was FUN! :) Thankfully I didn't get pulled over, and we made that last 50 miles in about 30 minutes.
Then the wait... When we finally got to the house around 5:30 the MTB was doing well and was progressing, but was only about half way dilated. So after Mom checked the baby's heart tones we sat in the living room and waited, Mom had a magazine and I scrolled Pinterest.
On Thursday November 21st I got off work, checked my phone, and found 6 missed calls, a new voice mail, and several text messages, all from Mom and Dad. Whoops! I called Mom back to find out what was going on, turns out that she was on her way to pick up some extra equipment from the cottage in Mississippi when she had a blowout!! Thankfully Dad was able to go rescue her because shortly after he got to where she was the call came in that our Mother To Be (Hence forth MTB) was having contractions three hours away. At this point I'm still in Alabama so I pulled up the GPS on my phone to find the routes that we could take that would meetup somewhere so that we didn't have to take two cars all the way to the birth. After confirming the routes with Mom I got on the road, and an hour and a half later we met up and left her car in a parking lot.
Now comes the hurry part! On my way to the rendezvous I was only driving 80mph, but after I picked up Mom, and her bag of instruments that would legitimize our speeding if we were pulled over, I bumped it up to around 85-90mph. Well when we were 50 miles from our destination the MTB calls to tell us that her water has just broken!! After that I floored it!! At one point I was doing 105mph!! And I'm not gonna lie, it was FUN! :) Thankfully I didn't get pulled over, and we made that last 50 miles in about 30 minutes.
Then the wait... When we finally got to the house around 5:30 the MTB was doing well and was progressing, but was only about half way dilated. So after Mom checked the baby's heart tones we sat in the living room and waited, Mom had a magazine and I scrolled Pinterest.
At about 7:30 the dad informed us that he had just been asked to not leave the bed room where the MTB was laboring. Progress!!
At about 7:40 mom checked the baby's heart tones and the mom's dialation and and found that she was only at 8 centimeters, but she wanted to push. Mother told her not push, but two minutes later she could tell that the mom was going to push regardless and checked again and found full dialation!!!!
Two pushes later we had a head, and when mom swept the neck with her finger, to make sure that the umbilical cord wasn't wrapped around it, she bumped the tiny hand the had been born with the head and the baby grasped her finger!!!!!! (the hand was up under the chin and therefore didn't cause any problems with the delivery) That was the most AMAZING thing I have ever seen!!! After just one more push we had all 8lbs 10oz 20 1/2 inches of her at 7:51pm.
After we weighed and measured her I got to dress and hold her. :) Mom and I stayed at the house for about three hours after the birth, cleaned up, changed the sheets (the not so exciting part of this job), checked the mom and baby again, and just generally made sure everything was hunky dory before we headed home.
We finally got home at 2:15am, and I was back at work by 8:05 later that morning. :) 
She posed perfectly for me!! :)
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