I met Kayla a little later in her pregnancy after she and her husband discovered there were no close freestanding birthing centers in Colorado Springs for them to deliver at and knew that a hospital birth was not for them. They decided a home birth was the way they wanted to go and proceeded forward with excitement for this new experience. Kayla’s pregnancy progressed as expected and we prepared for her two go two weeks overdue as she had done in the past. This time around we had good dates from an early US and her 20 week anatomy scan agreed with that as well so we were hoping things might be a little earlier. I saw Kayla at her 40 week appointment and we joked about her delivering earlier than her other baby’s, well at least one could hope!
I was shocked when I received a call from Kayla just a couple days later letting me know she was in labor! She was 40 weeks and 3 days! We were excited to finally have her dates more accurate and it show! I headed to Kayla’s home and prepared for another night awake! I arrived to find Kayla laboring on her hands and knees and doing so well. She continued this way and then moved to the pool where an urge to push set in. We all prepared excitedly for baby and her children were brought in. After several contractions of pushing, it seemed things were not progressing as expected so I asked to check Kayla’s cervix. As it turned out, she was 7cm and having a VERY early urge to push! I helped her breath through the contractions to help preventing swelling but the urge was so intense for her. After about an hour of fighting contractions, we decided to get out of the pool and walk. I had her walk up and down the stairs, stopping to do lunges and opening her pelvis to help baby move down. She tolerated this for about an hour but the urge was only getting stronger. We decided to do a second check only to find her still at 7cm and I could finally tell baby was asynclitic and we needed to do some position changes to get him to rotate better in the pelvis. Kayla was not pleased with me 😉 but I convinced her to do hands and knees, and rotating kneeling lunges to encourage baby to rotate. She worked hard in these positions and finally landed on her right leg up after doing everything else. We had agreed that if baby had not rotated with these positions, we would sit on the toilet. Within three contractions on the right lunge, Kayla shouted that the baby was coming! We were all SO relived since she had been at this ALL night and was by far her longer labor of her three vaginal births and she was DONE. She laid on her side and with two pushes and one position change to hands and knees, baby FINALLY greeted us with a sweet cry! She had done it!! Baby Rohan was born at 7:05am weighing in at 8#3oz and ready to join his adoring family! Thank you Rohan and family for allowing me the privilege to be present during this special time!