I walked into the room in the middle of an exhale and smile. Caity hadn’t messaged me again after Reynaldo let me know they were headed to The Birth Center “asap”. It was a beautiful fall, Sunday morning. There was sunlight pouring over the roads and a light breeze as I stepped out of the car. Caity’s mom and I arrived at the same moment and we passed by a throng of butterflies under the window as we half jogged to the backdoor.

Caity was in full active labor now. It was progressing quicker than she had anticipated or really believed her body was capable. After a long and arduous first labor in hospital, this was the definition of different. Caity breathed. She smiled. She swelled. She released.

I had never met Caity prior to walking into her birth space. I feel like many of my clients are like this. There’s a trust there in our phone calls and in my work that I’m going to give them something they’ll love, that I’m going to show up for them not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually too. The beautiful thing about not meeting birth clients until the birth though… is seeing the full depths of a bond between the parents.

I was immediately struck by how Caity and Rey fit together. They move together. They breathe together. They are one. Rey didn’t leave her side. He held Caity. And not just with the entirety of his physical strength. But he held her.

He told her she was amazing.
He told her she was beautiful.
He told her he loved her.

Caity’s labor intensified. She became listless and then restless and then listless again. You could see the waves of her competency washing over her. She was listening to her body though, and just as we watched her lose control, she just as quickly began besting her pain. I quietly told her to relax her face as she became expressive, to let go of that tension and release into it. At some point she began to float and you could not only see the full depth of her surrender, but you could vividly see her body working. Caity’s abdomen rocked back and forth as her fundus bore down.

Reynaldo held her all this time. He bent over the pool and used every measure of his strength to support Caity’s head and shoulders. He was immovable. You could see the strain in the sinews of his arms. You could see the commitment to her in his steadfast hold.

Caity began to push in earnest at the reassurance of her midwife. Her belly rocked just above the surface of the water and we each watched as it contracted again and again. Caity was in full control now. She was collected, calm, and quiet. As Juniper’s head crowned the midwife noted that her water was still intact. An en caul baby! Caity continued to work with her body and let fetal ejection reflex take over. She, what seemed like effortlessly, delivered the head and shoulders with her water bag rupturing somewhere in between. With a cloud of milky white, vernix occluded fluid swirling around her, Juniper left the vessel of Caity’s womb and entered into Amy’s hands. Amie deftly untangled Caity and Juniper’s shared cord and delivered her unto Caity’s arms.

In an instant the room that was filled with quiet reassurances exploded with Caity saying hello to her daughter. “Hi baby!” Overcome with all of the emotions of only childbirth can bring out, Caity said Juniper’s name what felt like a hundred times. She held her and laughed and smiled and hello’d, and all the while Rey still held her.