Birth

One of my clients in the Pregnancy & Parenting program is having a baby today. I talked with her yesterday and she was on her way to see her doctor. She said she'd call me back to let me know what was going on...and I never heard from her. Although she's only 17, she's really good about calling me back. So I called to check in today and had a hilarious conversation:

"Hi, is Sally there?" "Uhh...no...she's at the hospital!!" said the male voice. "Well, this is Wendy from Bethany, I just wanted to check in." "OH! Yeah, she went in last night and they gave her something for the contractions, so it'll be sometime today!" So she is literally having a baby today.

I don't normally get to be this involved. Frequently I will get a call a week after the fact and hear "I had the baby, I'm not breastfeeding, it sucked, come over whenever you want." But "Sally" has been a wonderful young woman to work with, she's gone to classes at the hospital, a la leche league meeting, etc. She's really been keeping me in the loop and is accepting of my help, which is great. I'm just so excited to be a part of people's pregnancies, at whatever level. I love that my two programs are so complementary, I have learned a lot about reproductive health in the last year. I am not only a sexpert, but know a lot about pregnancy and babies too! I've gotten really interested in the alternatives to the high intervention birth, which is the trend in the US. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 1 in 3 babies in the United States is delivered by cesarean section. Women frequently give birth with epidurals for pain relief, doctors induce labor with pitocin and break the woman's water if things aren't moving quickly enough. I'm not saying that the medical field is out to get women or anything like that, but I do feel that we are moving in a dangerous direction in this country. Women no longer just have babies, everything is highly scheduled. It has been very interesting reading about the history of childbirth, the changing roles of doctors and midwives and other trends.

I try to encourage my clients to breastfeed and make up a birth plan in advance. I don't push my own beliefs about medication, but I do push things like rooming in with the baby, which research has shown to improve bonding and breastfeeding. I dont care if they get an epidural or are induced, I just want to make sure that they are able to talk to their doctors and have their opinions validated.

Anyway, that got way off topic. All I wanted to mention was how thrilled I was today when I got to talk to this client's dad while his grandbaby was being born.