When most people in the birth industry hear the term "induction", they often cringe. Inductions have come to be equated with long, unproductive early labor sometimes resulting in days-long augmented processes and nearly 50% csection rates. But we all know that birth is unpredictable and you never really know what will happen. Such is the case with this birth story!

After a few elevated blood pressure readings, the decision was made by her care providers to induce labor - and when the options were laid out, this couple chose to go with Cytotec as the first method of induction. They would move forward with pitocin after that and then hopefully not need other interventions. This was a much different plan than the low-intervention, completely natural path that they had planned to walk. But they moved forward positively and with great hope that their baby would be born and their labor would progress as naturally as possible. I was kept informed throughout the evening and the text messages kept coming every 3-4 hours saying "Still at 3cm. Going to rest for a while. We'll let you know when things pick up." It was getting to the wee hours of the morning, so I headed to sleep hoping to be woken up in the morning with a progress update.

The next update was a phone call, not a text. I heard, "She's complete!" and I hopped out of bed, threw on some clothes and FLEW to the hospital as quickly as I could. I think when I looked back at my time stamps, my first image was taken 23 minutes after that phone call!!!

When I walked into the room, there was a flurry of activity, multiple nurses, and I heard "Push Push Push PUSH!" I quickly unzipped my bag, threw on the flash, set my camera to what I thought was right for the lighting and turned on the video to get at least one pushing sequence. It turned out that my settings were not correct and I fiddled for a second before I heard "You can reach down and touch him if you want". I searched for a spot to get a good vantage point (at this point there were more bodies than I could count) and all of a sudden there was a baby on her chest! It happened so incredibly fast - not one person in the room was expecting a first time mom who had never pushed before to go from 3cm to crowning in less than an hour and a half and then push her baby out in mere minutes.

But the room was full of joy and everyone was healthy and happy and little Roux was adored by all. I went back the next day to get a full account of the birth story from his parents and I strongly recommend clicking on the video to watch their account and see more precious images of this sweet family! My heart was so full being able to be there to capture their birth story and I'm sure that this is one for the books!