Mama in the City

Remember that post I wrote a few weeks ago asking about what I should put in my doula bag for my sisters upcoming birth? Well, it turns out that I didn't need all the labour aides that I had stocked up on because my sister ended up having her baby on her bathroom floor at home after a fairly quiet and speedy first labour. In the 7+ years as a labour and delivery RN I've never had a first time mama have such a fast labour that ended up with a surprise unattended home birth. Of course, a second or third time mama has had this experience but first time mamas usually take a bit of time to push their babies out and give a bit of warning that things are progressing towards birth. Apparently my sisters new baby girl likes to follow the beat of her own drum because there she was, delivered by her daddy on the floor of their en suite after only a couple of pushes. 911 dispatch coaching the dad to be through delivering his baby daughter.

The day baby Alice was born I was working and had been texting with my sister all morning about some cramping she had been having since 5:30 AM. We did the whole, 'it could be labour..it could be false' debate for awhile and made a plan to give it time to see what happened. She even went to work and finished her school year off as a teacher. I was never totally convinced that she heading into true labour but did waffle back and forth and thought that after my 12 hour shift I'd go and see her and at least suss things out. At 2 PM I talked to her on the phone to get more of an idea what was happening and listen to her during a contraction. She was talking through them which told me that things were still early. It was then that I thought that she was going towards labour but it still sounded very early and it was her first baby. The maternity RN in me even said to her, '...and don't worry sis. You won't have the baby on the bathroom floor!'. Little did I know...

I was incredibly shocked when I got a text message photo around 4 PM of my sister laying on the bathroom floor holding a newborn and looking a bit shocked. At first I thought her and her husband were trying to play a joke on me, which would be sort of fitting as they were both drama majors, but then I looked a bit closer and saw a blood pressure cuff on her arm and realized that the baby she was holding was not a doll but a real pink newborn. At that moment I was all, 'OH MY GOD! SHE HAD THE BABY!!' and called a coworker over to view the photo to further validate my conclusion.




The great part of working in maternity is that we live and breathe birth and babies and we love it. The coworkers that viewed the photo got all misty eyed and even did their own, 'are you serious?!'. I was totally distracted at work and even blubbered to my induction patient that my sister had just had a surprise home birth. Luckily, my patient and her husband absolutely loved the story and kept asking me for updates on my sister and wanted to see photos of the baby.

Let's all give a big welcome to the newest baby in my life, my sweet baby niece Alice! She came into this world on her own terms with a very fantastic birth story and of course a big congratulations to my sister and brother in law for having the coolest delivery story!