Everyday's a beautiful day for a birth

This is how I am awaken sometimes in the middle of the night: by a text from the birth phone at the birthing clinic stating:

"Gud am, we have labor now, g2p1, 6cm, 80effaced,+1, membrane intact, vital's normal" Text sent at 3:29am. Could there be a better reason to get up at 3am than to help participate in the miracle of a birth?! I'm pretty thrilled to be so fortunate to receive such texts and participate in these life giving events.

I've finally, officially caught my first baby! He was born September 23rd at 11:13pm and he is beautiful! Of course, Sherina, our head midwife helped me catch him, but it still felt wonderful to actually have this hands-on experience.


Meet King Adrian! Yes, that's his real name!! Isn't he beautiful?

Here I am doing the baby check on him. After every birth, the baby is immediately placed on the mother's belly until the cord is clamped (the cord is clamped after it stops pulsating, usually about 5-10 minutes after birth). Once the cord is clamped, the baby is placed at the mother's breast to breastfeed. It is only after the baby has breastfed and bonded with the mom for about 1 hour that we do our routine baby check.

After the baby check, which includes obtaining the baby's length, weight, head circumference, etc, we dress the baby in clothes provided by the family. Every baby here wears mittens and booties and gets wrapped like a little burrito! Here is me and the little cutie pre-wrap!




Here I am with 2 of the midwives that assisted in this delivery. Rose is on the left and Grace on the right. The clinic has 5 Filipino midwifes and 2 western midwives.






And here's the little bundle, all wrapped up, snuggling next to mom, and ready to sleep after such a hard day's work : )

Here I am at the first post-partum visit doing our mom and baby check-ups! Both him and his mom are going really well!