Our Doula, Germaine visited us at home today. A Doula is a birth support professional who provides emotional, physical and sometimes spiritual support to the laboring mother, and in our case the worried father as well. As I mentioned earlier, Germaine was fantastic and ended up being invaluable. Originally, we hired her to help guide us through the birthing process as an experienced resource. She provided the encouragement that allowed us to spend the early part of labor at home and then joined us at the hospital as Drea continued to labor on her own without drugs or intervention. After 11 hours of labor, Drea's pain became too intense and we opted for an epidural for pain releif. This allowed us to relax for the next 5 hours. Germaine continued to support Drea with massage and encouraging words as Drea began involuntarily shaking as a side effect of the medication. Germaine was proud of how far Drea went on her own, dialating to 4cm, noting that the drug free progress gave her labor a good start. When the unthinkable happened and the epidural began to fail, Germaine was quick to assist Drea in making it through to Jason's birth with no pain management. Watching Drea endure this kind of pain was really difficult for me as well. The anesthesiologists made every attemt to fix the epidural as the petocin made the contractions stronger than they would have been naturally. Germaine very discretely positioned herself in a way to help shield Drea from seeing the moments of anguish on my face while providing me with comforting glances. As I recovered, Germaine helped me step in to comfort Drea. Drea and I believe we couldn't have done it without her.

Thank you Germaine.