This is what you get when you pay money!

I was recently introduced to a very nice, upper-class, well-known family here in our city. They own a huge supermarket & apartment complex. Their son & wife were expecting their first baby and a friend from another company asked if I'd be willing to help this young girl deliver her first baby. I met her last week and went over the basics of natural childbirth. She was a sweet 24 year-old girl without a clue as to what she was getting into. I figured I'd meet with her once a week from now until she delivered. I was surprised to get a call yesterday saying that she'd gone into labor and asking me to come quickly. I got dressed and flew out the door to their house. Upon arrival at the house, I knew the girl was nowhere near ready to deliver so we sat and talked for awhile and I kept a close eye on her progress. It was 9AM when I arrived at the house. That stretched into quite a few hours of sitting at the house, having lunch, many cups of tea and coffee and finally about 3PM I deemed that she was getting close. We went to the private "luxurious" hospital where you actually pay for their services. I was anxious to see what that would be like compared to the gov't hospital. Wow! As soon as we arrived, the mother gave the cleaning ladies some money so they'd take good care of us and make sure things were clean. At one point I mentioned about the squeaky delivery room door and within minutes someone was there putting Vaseline on all the hinges and no more squeak! I guess the main advantage is that there was only one woman in the delivery room and as many family members as wanted to could come in. At times it was an absolute zoo; I even had to chase everyone out at one point because I could tell my patient was getting very annoyed. I was especially excited because I succeeded in getting the father to attend the delivery, something I was told has NEVER happened in all of history here! He thanked me today for making him go in and take part. He was a huge support and really beautiful to watch him with his wife. The labor & delivery itself went like clockwork, sometimes intense at the end as this was a first baby and we'd only had one lesson together in breathing and pushing techniques. Fortunately the girl spoke a bit of Arabic and some English so we were able to communicate quite well. As usual, I was exhilarated by being in the delivery room. The facilities were absolutely wretched. No lights in the bathroom, a wrinkled doctor's coat thrown over the table for a sheet, no stirrups, no frills of any kind, but very competent midwives and everything came out just fine. In fact, 2 hours after she delivered she was home in her own bed. And I still had an hour to run home and get a shower and make it to my English class! Amazing what you can pack into a day.