Very exciting day: saw a baby born!

Today was Friday! I can not believe that it's Friday and I have spent a whole 5 days straight going to hospital and being very busy in the afternoon. This week was so amazing. I can not believe this weekend will mark 2 weeks since I left home. Tuesday marks exactly half way done with the program. I can not believe its gone by so fast. Oh we have had a power outage on and off for two days now so posting has been hard to do so sorry that's it's been out of order a bit and slow. 

Well today started off very slow. I had planned to go to minor theater again with two of my fellow interns. They have been doing a great job teaching me about procedures and how they are properly done and teaching me of side effects and different drugs to use. It was exactly what I had hoped for that the med students would help and take me under their wing almost and teach me. I have learned so much.

Anyway, I was going to go to minor theater and Accident and Emergency but unlike normally on a Friday there was almost no one there. Usually there is a huge line of people for procedures but today there was one man in theater getting a new supra pubic catheter. The procedure was so quick and done not even in the theater but in the hallway. Afterwards we walked and no one was around. Me and two interns decided to go to maternity ward and see if we could see a birth because I have yet to see one. We ended up actually scrubbing up for a Caesarian section. We had to leave our shoes at the door and get new scrubs in order to go into the procedure room. The ones I got made me look like a midget. It was so funny. 

This woman it was her first pregnancy and she was 26. The diagnosis was fetal distress so she had been scheduled for an emergency c section. The anesthesiologist was late so instead of doing a spinal anesthetic they just did gas to put her out. They prepared the sterile field and prepared the woman and Simon and Andrew explained to me the procedure. When the second surgeon finally arrived they started the procedure. I have never seen the procedure before and was so excited and as close as I could. The procedure went pretty quick until the baby was out. The baby came out and was not crying at first and was given immediately to the midwife and brought to an adjacent room with the resuscitaire after cord was cut. We followed and the baby started moving and crying a bit and the midwife stimulated it by rubbing him with the cloth under the heat. The little boy urinated and started moving and crying. White babies' extremities are usually blue but these babies are a bit white so his feet and ha do were a cream color.  They use suction here and took a tube and placed it up his nose and in his throat to remove all the fluid. The baby was able to breathe and cry so the midwife took it straight to be weighed and he was a good size baby weighing 3.6   Kg so about 7 lbs. 

After weighing and some tests she swaddled the baby and left him on the resuscitaire and put an adult size oxygen mask on face which immediately fell off. They have no size smaller than that and reuse them. As the baby stayed in that room while the mom was stitched up. The stitching up took almost two times longer than the c section itself. They had to however place the uterus outside the body to examine and remove any remaining parts of the placenta. It was very interesting because both her uterus and ovaries were outside her body and after remaining pieces of placenta were removed they placed it back inside the body cavity and started the sutures. 

This was the only procedure I saw today but I can not explain the feeling of seeing a baby born for the first time. I wanted to hold the baby so badly. As the mom was coming off the anesthesia she was wheeled to the "recovery room" which was the hallway outside the theater. She was wheeled and placed on one side of hallway while the next mother being prepared for section was directly on other side. The hallway acted as the preparatory and recovery room. We had to leave after that but it was such a cool experience. 

Woman on right was coming out for recovery and woman on left is being prepared. 

The thing about births here is that no one from the family can be with the women as they give birth not even their mothers or sisters or husbands. They all must wait outside the ward and its a locked gate with a guard who only let's staff and family in after baby is born. I can not imagine having no one there to be with me during labor. The woman all have their phones and call their relatives outside to tell them the progress and the families just have to guess and wait until they get a call saying the baby and mom made it or not. It's very different. 

I still want to see and be apart of a normal birth so hopefully next week I will go back to labor ward. Mondays are suppose to be very busy in labor ward so maybe will go there.