even under the best conditions, giving birth is not without risk. and sometimes the best conditions aren t even an option. according to the centers for disease control, in 2014 roughly 3,000 out of 4 million u.s. births happened outside of a home or a medical facility. many things could go wrong. the heart rate, for example, of the baby could go down and no one would know. that baby could suffocate or strangulate on the cord or be in another position, like other than head down which could be alarming to an untrained person. july 2015, jonathan and his wife leisha leave their lake jackson home to a birth center in texas as leisha begins contractions with their third child.
i reached around and felt his head and that s when i was like, oh, my word, he s coming out in the car. i lost my mind pretty much at that point. i couldn t believe that that was actually happening, and i was like, well, his head s out. i have to push him the rest of the way out because he can t stay halfway in. oh, my god, the baby is out. true or false? sitting upright is an optimal position for labor, allowing gravity to assist with the birth. the answer is false. when you re sitting, the birth canal is angled. it doesn t allow the baby to pass under the pelvic bone to deliver as easily if mother was leaning back slightly. either way, leisha s baby isn t waiting. do you want me to stop or do you want me to keep going? keep going. all right. we had a baby.
they re in the middle of a 75-minute drive to the birth center when leisha goes into labor. my wife had asked me to film this birth because she hadn t actually seen the previous two births so she wanted to see this one from camera perspective. so i just set it on my leg and i was paying attention to the road. the water broke. true or false? the best indication that a birth is imminent is when a woman s water breaks. the answer is false. there s actually a more simple signal. there s sort of a guttural noise that women begin to make very instinctively that is the clue that labor is going to be happening very imminently. it s the moan groan type of grunt that is the trigger.