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[macheesi]

huh, david's sister just had a baby girl... in 15 minutes!  who knew?

Comments

[vntigger]

dang. has she had other kids? It's usually slowest the 1st time and super fast the others (especially with more kids). There were a couple babies I delivered where we were practically telling the mom to cross her legs and try to hold it in for the doc to arrive so I wasn't delivering by myself!

Congrats!

[macheesi]

yep, this is her second. fortunately, she's a midwife, so she basically delivered her own baby :-P

[vntigger]

haha. It's not too hard catching babies. Heck, I caught a few. :-)

[macheesi]

oh! we were also trying to figure out the technical definition of when labor actually begins. is it with the first contraction, or when the water breaks, or something else?

[vntigger]

haha. Labor officially begins when there starts to be contractions that are moving the baby along and could potentially deliver the baby. When the water breaks, it's just refered to as a "rupture of membrane" and there's occassionally contractions which aren't necessarily labor but are just contractions but they aren't coordinated enough to strong enough to actually move the baby. Uusally docs monitor how quickly the baby is dilating the birth canal to see how quickly the baby may come out. Uusally there's a pretty decent time from the 1st contraction to adequate dilation of the canal for the baby to come through. Once the canal is dilated enough though, for women who have had prior deliveries, the final push for the baby to come out is usually pretty fast. 1st time pregnancy women take longer to reach adequate dilation and often also take longer to finally get the baby out too

[macheesi]

wow, it really was pretty fast then. she had minor contractions for several hours, but only 4 really big ones starting about 15 minutes before the baby came, and it was only 7 minutes from when the water broke until the baby came. guess she's just efficient ;-)

[vntigger]

Yeah some women are just more made for delivering babies. The old time OB/GYN docs used to look at the shape of a woman's pelvis and it would give them a pretty good idea of how easy the delivery was likely to be. I think that new docs don't do it as much but there are certain pelvic configurations which definitely lend themselves for easier child bearing. I think my mom had both my sister and I extremely quickly. I think that's the way to go! Women who take longer also somewhat have more of a tendency to tear (although delivering TOO fast will also lead to tearing) and fixing the tear is just icky in my mind!