All in Due Time :

Fifth Delivery

Their first two babies were born in Ohio, the third in Indiana and the fourth in Illinois. They were in Minnesota when they got pregnant with the fifth. They found a midwife, made sure everything was covered by their insurance and arranged for another home birth. They had 10 –15 midwives on call – a real sign of being in a bigger city. Then they decided to move to South Dakota. They weren’t sure if they’d have any luck finding a midwife in such a small town. They found out it was against the law to have home births in that state, which was very depressing for them. So they fully expected to have a hospital delivery. They visited the labor and delivery area in the hospital and were pleased to find it very nice and homey. There was only one midwife on staff and she was very nice as well. By this time they were in the 7th month of the pregnancy. It was a surprise to the midwife, but really, they were used to being pregnant and so busy that they almost forgot to even schedule an appointment. They had to remind themselves to put everything together, interpreters, appointments, plans and the like. The midwife almost didn’t even take them because they got in touch with her so close to the due date. Egina told her all her stories (she loves to tell them) and so the midwife agreed to take them on. Egina explained how all the previous babies were late. The interpreter had had a lot of experience interpreting births. They all looked at the calendar and estimated the delivery for around December 25 or so. Things went along and then, around Thanksgiving, Egina told Jimmy she thought she was starting to feel something. They couldn’t believe that anything could happen that early. She waited a couple of weeks. She was experiencing some bleeding and although Jimmy didn’t think it was a big deal, she went ahead and called the midwife. She went into the hospital to get checked and she wasn’t having any contractions and the bleeding wasn’t serious enough to worry about.

So, once again, Jimmy begged Egina to try, this time, to give birth during the daylight hours for a change. But it was not meant to be, it seems. Around 9 p.m. Egina was feeling some contractions and some of the restlessness that came with her labor. She packed for the hospital, paced the floor and warned Jimmy the baby would be coming that night. At around 11 she told him they should just go ahead and go to the hospital because she felt the baby could come at any time. She remembers being really annoyed with the nurse that met them and took her to their room. He was walking way too fast for her to keep up. (Jimmy adds that he thought he was out parking the car.) Here she was, walking along, pregnant, in labor, huffing and puffing as the nurse strode down the hall. She had to stop to catch her breath and it took him a while to realize she couldn’t keep up with him. Given that he was a man, he’d never experienced what it was like to be in labor. Egina was really irritated by this time.
They got into the delivery room and all set to go. The midwife was very good about communicating everything to them and things were working out well. She was at 7 cm. As usual, there was no way Egina could stay still during the labor process. She had to be constantly moving. So she paced and sat and moved around hoping the baby would hurry up and come. The midwife offered to break her water. For the first time in all the deliveries, Egina talked directly to the midwife. She’d always gone through Jimmy before. Egina asked why the midwife wanted to break her water and she said that it might help the process along. Egina was incredibly restless, unable to sit in one place for more than a few seconds. Jimmy kept trying to get her to settle, but she just couldn’t. Her water broke and the contractions became really painful. The baby was really close to delivering so she finally settled down. Everyone sprung into action, ready to help. Jimmy got her to focus on her breathing (something they totally had forgotten about). He had to tell her when to push, how to breathe, when to relax – it was like she had never given birth before, she just totally forgot how to manage the process. But the baby came out just fine, without any epidural or other medication. It took about 45 minutes from the time they got there to the actual birth.

And, as Jimmy says- that’s the story of babies 1-5 – as for #6….to be continued!

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