Actress Rumer Willis ‘popped’ her own water with her finger when she was in labour with her daughter Louetta.
The 34-year-old actress and her partner Derek Richard Thomas welcomed Louetta on April 18. She she recalled how her labour at home was going to plan but things suddenly moved quickly and she ‘dilated from two to eight inches in about an hour’, meaning she was ready to start pushing but the fluids surrounding the baby were still intact, reports femalefirst.co.uk.
Rumer, who had her boyfriend, mom Demi Moore and sisters Tallulah and Scout Willis with her when she gave birth, recalled on the ‘Informed Pregnancy’ podcast: ‘(My doula) was checking me and felt my water bag bulging, but still not popping, which was wild.
‘So, I was like, ‘Well, should we break it?’ She goes, ‘Well, you can’. I’m like, ‘What?!’ I was like, ‘Are you serious?’
‘I reached my finger up there, and I’m feeling and it was crazy. I could totally feel this little bag — it feels like a water balloon, but with a bit tougher skin.
‘(The doula) said, ‘OK, on the next contraction, just push against it with your finger’. And I popped it. I think there’s a photo of me and I just have this look of shock and surprise on my face.’
From that moment, Rumer’s labour progressed quickly and she barely had time to register what was happening.
She said: ‘It was like, I pushed a little bit… well, I didn’t push a little bit, I pushed harder than I’ve ever probably, but it was literally like I pushed, her head was out. I pushed again and her whole body was out.
‘There was no pause in between. It wasn’t one of those moments where it was, ‘Oh, your head is out’.
‘My midwife and my partner caught her. It was the wildest thing. She had a cord wrapped around her neck, but it was also wrapped around her body in like almost like a prom sash. We had four hands under there, under the birth stool. I’m going, ‘Give me the baby. Give the baby’.
‘But then, as soon as they untangled her, she was in my arms.’
The ‘House Bunny’ star described holding her daughter for the first time as ‘the most ecstatic, joyful moment of (her) entire life’.
She added: ‘I just started sobbing with joy. I have some of the most beautiful photographs of it of just me looking at her, and looking at my sisters, and looking at my mom and my mom holding me. My sister actually told me something later that I didn’t even realise I said. I looked at Louetta at one point, and I said, ‘I missed you so much’ .I thought that was so sweet because it truly was like this moment of, ‘Oh, yes! We’re back together’.
‘It’s like, ‘Oh, yes. This person who I’ve known and I’ve been waiting for forever, here you are’.’
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