**Graphic content** Placenta Delivery and examination

This post is for all my nurse friends that like ALL the details!

Things tend to simply move slower in a home birth, and as long as mother and baby are doing fine, the midwives tend to follow the mother's lead when it comes to the delivery of the placenta. With Kylie's birth there was a good amount of blood in the water, I had a tear and ended up loosing enough that I was given some oral methergine and herbs to help. I had simply stood up in the birth tub and one of the midwives guided the placenta out. With Cooper i wanted to deliver it myself (i didn't tear, and i was not loosing blood in the tub), so I stood up and tried to deliver it myself, but had a hard time guiding it out. So the student midwife guided it out for me. With Wes, I really wanted to deliver it on my own. I had been looking for the gush of blood that indicates that the placenta has released, but it never came. We waited and waited, I think it was just about 50 minutes  in the pool before we finally got out. Since I had not seem the gush, I was worried that maybe the placenta was not ready to come, but it had been so long. So after cutting the cord, handing Wes to Craig.

There was a lot of the membranes just hanging out, it was interesting, I wonder what it is like when babies are born in the bag of waters, but I imagine the membranes are kinda like this.  I asked the kids if they wanted to feel them and they both did.

I still up and tried to guide it out, I could feel that it was right there, but the cord was so slippery, it was hard. 

 I continued to try, putting a little more traction on the cord, and pushing, but I could not get it to come out. I was pulling enough on the cord to break down some of it's structure, which is why you see blood in this photo.

 We decide that I just cant get a good angle and the student midwife goes behind me and tries guiding it back while I push.

With the slightly different angle she is able to guide it out easily while I give a little push.

 And into the bucket it goes.

 After the newborn exam, we took some time to look at the placenta. My bleeding had been minimal and my fundus was very firm, so we did not think there was any reason to believe there was placenta left behind. But there is always a full exam done of the placenta anyway. They look at the size, shape, how/where the cord is inserted and look to see if there are any signs of aging.

 Here we are showing Kylie the two different membranes that held the baby and waters.

 this is the side that baby saw, the "tree of life" is always so amazing to see.

 and this is the side that was attached to my uterus. When the placenta detaches, it is common to bleed from the spot where it was attached. Our body naturally releases oxytocin when we breastfeed which causes the uterus to contract and keeps the area from bleeding too much! So amazing!