My All Time Favorite Midwife Story

I was a lay midwife for about 6 years, doing homebirths. In that time I got to help close to 200 babies come into the world.

Midwives love to sit around and tell Birthing stories. We tell them because they touch us, they teach us, the make us laugh or they are truly unique with no catagory to place them in.

This one of those "unique" ones....

Three of us were there as the midwife team: Karen, Ella and me. The Mom, Carol, was a best friend of Karen’s. Karen was also good friends with the father’s parents, who were there at the house for the birth.

Carol was progressing well and she and Don, her husband, were alone in thier bedroom. We midwives were going in there every once in awhile to quietly check on things and take the baby’s heart tones (the way you make sure the baby is OK). We had just done our thing, all was going well and the three of us went into the living room to sit to give the parents some privacy.

The living room couch was on an angle, with a chair at one end, and a desk area behind it. Karen, Ella and I were sitting on the couch. Don’s Mom was in the chair, knitting, and his dad was reading the paper at the desk. My back was turned from the Grandma and Pa as I was at the end of the couch closest to them.

As the Grandparents were busy with themselves passing time, the three of us began to talk. I'm not too sure how we got on the subject, but Ella had just attended a midwife training workshop about emergencies and was talking about meconium.

A bit of background: Babies have this stuff in their bowel called meconium. It is very black and tarry. If the baby, at any time in the pregnancy is stressed at all, they will take a bit of a dump and let some of it out. Depending on the amount of stress and when the stress occurs, the amount in the amniotic fluid can be lots or very little and still formed or dispersed. Meconium is not automatically life threatening. It is always a concern. It becomes more of a concern the thicker it is because the baby’s lungs cannot inflate properly when the baby starts to breathe as the stickiness sticks to the tiny little lung passages. Not good, very very bad situation.

Meconium is much more common than you would think and in the vast majority of cases, problems can be avoided if the attendant does the right thing: the attendant has to suck as much of the meconium out as possible BEFORE the baby takes its first breath and gets all that stuff down in the lungs. The attendant does this when the baby’s head is out, but before the body is out, when the lungs are being naturally squeezed in the vagina with all the fluid coming out anyway. This happens between pushing contractions. The attendant always does tons of preventative suctioning with meconium, you do NOT mess with it.

At home, back then, we used a device that was restricted (we had to rely on friendly docs to get these for us) called a De Lee Mucous trap. This was a nifty little thing that had a compartment that trapped the baby’s mucous and meconium. There were two tubes leading into the trap. You put one in your mouth to provide suction, the other tube was inserted into the baby’s mouth and down the throat as far as you could safely go. You then suck and all the meconium is caught and left in the tube/trap.

Back to the story: There we are, three midwives sitting on the couch, Grandparents quietly doing their thing. I think that part of our comfort was that the grandparents had asked a few questions and we had talked back and forth, plus they were as close as a second family to Karen. Whatever it was we kind of forgot they were there.

Emma: So at this workshop, these women were talking about how if they didn’t have a De Lee that they were just using a catheter.

Me: You mean that they just stick the cath in the baby’s mouth, suck and …um…where does the mec go? In our MOUTHS???!!!???

Emma: Yeah…in fact, one of them said she only uses caths now..she says she feels like it gives her more control.

Karen and I are silent. I am not excited about the idea of that AT ALL. Of course I would not hesitate one nanosecond if there was no De Lee and meconium presented. I would actually do just about anything if there is an emergency. But...I would also make damn sure there was a DeLee ready, one next to it and plenty more in my bag as backup.

Karen: Well..I can see it.

Emma: Well, yeah...I mean at the workshop we began a discussion about it and talked about how it really is not all that different from swallowing come after giving head.

More silence as we think.

Me: Hadn’t thought of that one…but really...I would think that it would be much worse than swallowing come.

Karen: Ummm…Doesn’t everyone swallow come????

And then we proceeded discuss our views on swallowing versus not…. and what we do…. and how we do it for a few more minutes until…soft cough.

OOPS!!!!

Look of combined shock on three midwive’s faces as they remember Grandparents-to-be are in the room, now laughing hysterically. All of sudden it was time to take heart tones, get Carol some tea and make sure (again) that all the equipment was ready for the birth, just in case.

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Here is a beautiful pictoral diary of what a Homebirth looks and feels like all the way from going to a check up, early labor all the way through examining the placenta. It's beautiful and exactly what I experienced.

First item pictured is a Fetalscope. You put the ear pieces in your ear, the arched thing on your forehead, the other end on the mother's belly. You not only get the sound coming in your ears, but also from bone conduction through your forehead.