Eight years ago, my first child arrived exactly 49 minutes after my first contraction. It started with intense nausea that caused me to vomit, and I delivered without any pain relief. This detail becomes important.
Now, at 38 weeks pregnant with my second child, I’m in the hospital because my waters are trickling, though I have no labor pains.
Suddenly, the nausea hits again, and I’m violently sick. Here we go again, I think.
Trusting my body, I call for the midwife, explaining that the heaving has caused my waters to bulge (if you know, you know). I ask to be moved to the delivery suite, but she refuses. She tells me I have no pain, no measurable contractions, and that I’ll be there for hours.
I suggest she break my waters. She refuses.
I tell her I feel the urge to push. Her response? “Do NOT push under any circumstances.”
Ignoring her, I give a small push, and my waters burst like a tsunami. The bed, the midwife, the drugs trolley—everything is soaked. And right behind the flood is my daughter, who shoots out of me like a horizontal bungee jumper.
The midwife, drenched and flustered, starts yelling for buttons to be pressed, gloves and clamps to be grabbed. It’s chaos. My daughter’s cord is wrapped around her neck once. I sit up, calmly unwrap it, and then look the midwife dead in the eye: “Told you.”
Hopefully, she’ll listen next time.
Edit: Wow, I did not expect this story to blow up! I’m reading the replies but probably won’t be able to answer them all.
To answer some common questions:
- My daughter was (and is) perfectly fine.
- The midwife had the audacity to say she wished she had students present because my delivery was “wonderful.”
- The labor lasted five minutes from buzzing the midwife to delivering my daughter.
One of my clearest memories? Watching the midwife trying to catch my daughter with two fingers jammed into one glove finger, leaving the other flapping around uselessly. It was oddly hilarious.
