Birth Log Book

One of my most treasured possessions is my birth log book that was very lovingly gifted to me by A, along with a note of support and encouragement about how I will one day fill it up.

Last week, I very carefully entered info for every one of the hundreds of births I have ever attended. Unfortunately, I am missing a few, like the very first birth I ever saw, which was at Highland Hospital. I was a brand new volunteer doula and I didn't even know the mother's name! I also accidentally left out a couple births I attended as an assistant midwife, just out of sheer forgetfulness. Mostly, though, my records are complete (I am a Libra) and the pages of my book are filling up!

Just for fun, I though I'd calculate some of my stats:

My c-section rate is 8.5%. Of course, this is somewhat misleading, as I wasn't fully responsible for the care provided to each woman, so I can't take full credit for this awesomely low number (the national c-section rate is 35-40%). Still, the vast majority of births I have attended have been vaginal births. All but two of the cesareans I attended were during the first couple years I worked as a doula.

For 84% of the families whose births I attended, at least one parent was a person of color. The Casa stats skew it, of course, but even as a doula I worked with many mixed couples. Many families were also here internationally from France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Portugal, Guam, Malaysia, India, and Australia.

Even including the Juarez families, most clients I worked with would consider themselves middle-class. But, there were still extremes and I fondly remember working with both a Palo Alto billionaire and a family living in the Richmond projects. Some clients asked for a reduced fee, some never paid at all, and others gladly paid my top amount plus gifts.

51.5% of the babies were girls and 48.5% were boys. From December 2007 to February 2008, there was a run of 7 girls in a row, including a set of girl-girl twins. In March of 2010, there was a run of 7 boys in a row.

The largest baby was 10 pounds 3 ounces. The smallest was 4 pounds 14 ounces.

What else? Let's see...

17.5% of the babies were delivered by doctors or residents in the hospital. 4% were delivered by nurse-midwives in the hospital. 9% were caught by licensed midwives at home. 69.5% were caught by licensed midwives (or supervised students) at birth centers, including Casa.

My book is a large register with space to record the details of 3000 births. There are spaces for info about how long each stage of labor was, what the mother's blood type was, what the Apgar scores were, the baby's name and weight and estimated gestational age, what the placenta was like, how much blood loss there was, what position she was in for delivery, what her perineum looked like after birth and who repaired it, how long I stayed postpartum, and what my role was, among other things. Eventually, I'll just be writing in my initials as the primary attendant, but I'm glad I decided to include all my births so I can see how things change over the years.

How I would have loved to own a book like this that belonged to my great-grandmothers who were midwives! It is a completely old-fashioned thing to do, but I really hope someday I'll be able to pass this (full) book on to the next generation, so they will know what life as a midwife was like in the 2000s.