Third births: finally getting it right
This came in as a comment on my blog post “What’s a Poor Midwife to Do?” but I think it should have it’s own blog space. Gloria
Gloria, this jumped off the page for me: “Something to notice is that for many women, it takes two screwed up births to get the third birth somewhat acceptable.”
This is me. I had two coerced c/s without labour and thereby two premature babies, the first of which was so premature that his skull would mold to my hands while I breastfed him and from sleeping so that I spent weeks gently re-forming his skull manually. He had breathing problems until 6 months pp, and his skin was so soft that I couldn’t even feel it under my fingertips.
I look at pictures of him now and see how obviously premature he was. He was my first and a c/s because otherwise, “if I [went] into labour, he could [have] die[d]” from his frank breech position. His brother was also a no-labour c/s for the very same positioning ‘reason.’
For my third baby, I saw an OB in my 1st trimester (midwives wouldn’t even talk to me seriously- I’d had ’shared care’ for the first two pregnancies after breech was indicated in the 3rd trimester) but left his office and never returned.
I freebirthed the next baby with my first labour- at 46+3, a 9 hour painless birth. It was GLORIOUS! He was 10lbs 3oz, strong and beautiful.
I then freebirthed another boy at 42+3 at the tail end of a flu that my whole family had. It was a precipitous labour- 3 minutes long, and he was 10lbs 8oz. Also beautifully formed and strong.
Now I am 45 weeks tomorrow with our fifth baby....
HERE to read the entire Blog on Gloria Lemay's site
