re : love and best wishes for Yuletide

[Marijke Eastaugh]

Dear friends, Ive just nearly recovered from one of those marathon labour and births that give me hope and I wish to share with you all.  First baby planning to birth at home. The labour got long 24hrs + for the mother and there was arrest at 3cm for 4 hours. Exhaustion starting to set in so I decided to transfer for assessment , the back up Dr someone I'm getting to really ENJOY working with. There are some GOOD Drs out there. Anyway pow wow amongst all  and epidural was decided upon. This was duly done and in the meantime to my absolute frustration the discovery that the Obst wasn't available and if we were to put up synto to augment labour there was no csection available.  OK  get past the anger, support this woman and her partner and mother and two support people.  Off we go to the big smoke in an Ambulance (my first time ever )down the hill.  Upon arrival , I'm all geared up for tackling the routines /policy and nast people, etc but also needing help. Turns out we had two wonderful Midwives , they respected this woman's wishes , read her birth plan a Kiwi Dr she gave the nod with all of it, the anaesthetist was even  funny!  We were so blessed to progress to a normal vaginal delivery squatting Intact some 9 hours after arrival. Yeh I know she had epidural, but why are rules made unless you can't stretch them a bit.  She went home that day.  THANK YOU UNIVERSE for giving me some hope for the future.   Of course there is much more to this story but I'm so very conscious of confidentiality.  Love to you all, Marijke