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Originally Posted by wholebreath
 We had a lovely birth at a Kaiser Hospital here in CA. Lovely staff that encouraged us every step of the way. I was upright through almost all of my labor, including being in the shower, on the birth ball, walking the halls, etc. They put me on the monitor for 10 minutes every 90 minutes and then I got up. I had brought lots of electrolyte water and snacks and noone ever said anything to me about it, even when I started throwing it all up and the nurses came in to check on me and clean up. No one mentioned pain medication or an IV to me once.
The nurse midwife that caught DS was really great. When I felt the urge to push and got on my hands and knees, she just sat back and let me do my thing. When that wasn't working well, she stepped in and helped with other positions and then when it became apparent he was having a hard time getting under my pubic bone, she worked really hard to help me work him down. After 2 hours of pushing, she told me at that point she was supposed to call the OB on call, but the baby was tolerating everything well (at that point a nurse was holding the monitor on my belly while I squatted) and she believed I could do this. I'm so grateful to her for that. He did finally descend and was born with his arm bent up by his head. It hurt like hell, but I did it.  I'm pretty sure if I had been medicated and lying on my back, I would have eventually had a C-section due to failure to progress. It just took so much work to get him down and I really had to work with the contractions. Not one person on the staff ever made me feel like a natural birth was impossible or stupid or anything. My postpartum experience wasn't as good, so we got out of there as soon as we could, but the L&D people were great. |
