November Fourth

We left early in the morning for the coastal town of Sanur to catch the ferry to the tiny island of Lembongan off the south east coast of Bali. The boat was full to the gills with people and supplies, and the hour-long journey was quite something. Nearly everyone on board got sea-sick about 40 minutes in as the ocean rolled tumultuously beneath us. It was worth every sweaty, nauseous, terrible moment. The island and its waters were absolutely breathtaking.

Moments after we climbed out into the surf to reach the shore, we received the call that our friend Meisha’s waters had broken, and she was running a temperature. The next boat off the island was at 3 pm, 6 hours later, and there we stood, I among her designated Doulas, and two midwives from her birth team. Back in Ubud, she labored with her husband, and two others of her birthing fleet, a close friend who is a Labour & Delivery Nurse, and another of her midwives.
With nothing for us to do but get there as soon as we could, we took in the day on the island. We chartered a small craft out past the break and snorkeled in the coral reef. It was absolutely amazing. We ate at small warungs on the beach, and snapped photo after photo of the beautiful views before us.

When three o’clock arrived we boarded the “speed ferry” back to Sanur. A fiberglass shell of a speed boat with three giant motors, she ushered us back in a mere 25 minutes – no sea-sickness among the lot of us – though it was quite something to slam through the waves at full throttle, I am certain we caught air a dozen times despite the 20 people on board.

Our friend Eddy was waiting on shore as we splashed through the surf past the swarm of entrepreneurs offering to carry folks from the boat to the dry sand for a dollar or two, and we were off for Ubud.

We tumbled out of the van at Bumi Sehat and rushed in to the laboring room where Meisha was still hard at work after several rounds of intravenous antibiotics. The decision was made to transport to Denpasar to the Women and Children’s Hospital, in light of her fever that was still intact after nearly ten hours.

The mad dash to the hospital, 40 minutes away in the Bumi Sehat van was surreal. Pagi, the Bumi driver sped through the streets, swerving around motorbikes, dumptrucks and Bali dogs as we raced. I sat in the middle seat of the van with Meisha, my arm around her waist, eyes locked with hers, forehead to forehead breathing together as she worked through contraction after contraction. The backseat held her husband, Jason, and Sylvia the midwife acted as a human IV pole, massaging the bag of antibiotics that ran into Meisha’s veins. In the front seat Ilu the student midwife and Sommer our Labour and Delivery Nurse shared a seat as Pagi urged the van onward – the yellow lights flashing on the roof running off of power from the cigarette lighter. Traffic came to a standstill, Barong parade passed us on our right. Traffic crawled. Meisha labored on.
We arrived at the hospital and rushed Meisha in. The doctor checked her progress and determined that a caesarean was needed to get baby Simone out and on her own course of antibiotics just in case whatever started the fever in Meisha was affecting the baby as well. At 9 pm, Simone was born. Healthy and absolutely beautiful, she weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces. Exhausted and deliriously happy we celebrated with the Mentos Jason had in his pocket, and waited for Meisha to be moved into the recovery room – pressing our faces against the glass of the nursery to see Simone. Jacinta, a midwife in our party, helped Meisha express some milk for Simone while she was in recovery. We snapped pictures feverishly as Jason fed Simone for the first time, with a syringe of Meisha’s milk. The love in the room was absolutely electric.
All was well. I cannot imagine a better day. At midnight, I crawled into bed with Dan, telling him of the birthing adventure. “I can’t not do this”, I told him, “I know…” he said and smiled as we drifted off to sleep.