By Holly Lindsay-Miller

It was a Wednesday, late December, 2009. I was perusing WBWC’s website, reading the short bios of all the midwives. I didn’t know who was going to be at my second birth. The baby always chooses and so I was fine with whomever. As my eyes scrolled, I stopped on Sarah Akers (now Dumas) and read that she had attended nursing school at the University of Cincinnati, where I had gone to college. She graduated the same time I did. And so, it was meant to be. That’s my midwife, I thought.

A couple hours later, reading in bed with my toddler asleep next to me and a pillow in between my legs, my water broke. I cried quietly. This was forever going to change the relationship I had with my first born. I knew it and she didn’t, laying there next to me precious and unassuming, a sleeping child.

I phoned the midwife on-call and it was SARAH!  “Head’s up, I just gushed some water outta me AND OH MY GOSH, SARAH, WE WENT TO THE SAME SCHOOL!” If you know Sarah she had a steady, comforting reaction, though I’m not certain she was as excited about our alma mater as I. She thought I’d be in later that night as this was my second pregnancy and the first was a steady, easy 12 hours. Ah, but don’t these kids have a mind of their own from the get-go? I was not doing much in regards to laboring. So I slept. We all slept.

Next morning, New Year’s Eve, a Thursday, still nothing to write home about, though as the day progressed so did my contractions. The doula came, the toddler went to the neighbor’s house, all of us on standby. I took a nap. I awoke and hello there! Contractions. Steady, ready, and let’s get ourselves to the Birth Center because you just know when it’s time.

The night was ridiculously gloomy, foggy, and quiet for a typically rowdy holiday. I could barely walk in the building, hunched and moaning, unable to talk. That’s when you know you’re not going to get sent back home, because contracting in a car is as close to hell as you’ll get in this lifetime and the last thing I wanted was to be sent back home.

Sarah was there waiting. (Today I think about how being on call two days in a row must have been exhausting, but midwives do this and more I now well know.) I staggered to the Peach Room, same as last time, got in the tub, same as last time. Contractions stopped. Dang. Sarah encouraged me to move around, maybe the shower would be a good compromise and it was.

I felt the baby shift her head into position (read: YOWZA.) She was crooked for the last weeks of our gestation. I was then encouraged to get onto the bed from the floor. Now this is where I feel you should know, my birth plan asked that my dilation not be checked. Labor is a head game for me and I didn’t want to know where I was in the process. Sarah never checked me. I still think about that part of our experience together. She was patient, calm, and trusting. She had no idea what my cervix was up to. Well, I’m sure she had an idea, but no numbers to think about. I felt the tide shift on that Peach Room bed. The guttural sound came from me. All birth workers know that sound. It was pushing time, but “NO NO NO I don’t give birth on a bed. I’m a water-birth kind of lady. I NEED THE TUB PEOPLE.” Sarah made a joke I still recall to this day, “Well, get the water warm, because this is not happening on a bed apparently.”

To the tub I went, tottering, but ready. I squatted and pushed for about 30 minutes and this second child of mine came earth side into the arms of a smiling midwife and onto the body of a mother who vowed, never again…