Another day in the life...

Well, guess what happened AGAIN - I forgot to save my blogs in the right format so all I can upload right now is this one about births :D




I would have just resaved them in another format except that I've just got back from a holiday weekend in Port St John's and my key has gone away with someone else so I am homeless! I'll try and put the one about my birthday and the last two weekends which have been epic 2k10 asap.





This blog is from 10th March:



Wednesday is late start day at work (8am) so I rolled out of bed around half seven, still feeling the cake hangover [i.e. feeling ill from excess cake eating, either that or I have some kind of food poisoning]. In the pharmacy I worked on some paperwork, joy to the world. This morning's particular delight was sorting out defaulting patients which is not fun, especially when you see that young kids have missed their treatment through no fault of their own, but because of their parents' lack of responsibility. Anyway, enough about that for now.



The ARV clinic today was not the best ever - despite being quiet, the patients seemed to have taken it upon themselves to forget how the clinic works and all came and sat in the dispensing room before seeing the doctor and I, lacking the necessary isiXhosa words, had very little success in making hem leave. I worked alone for a long stretch until half two, only stopping for a brief break where I ended up in paeds watching as the doctors struggled with the powers that be to try and get a sick kid air ambulanced to Nelson Mandela hospital. [In the end they succeeded, but it's a bit ridiculous how difficult it is to do anything around here!]



I had only been back in the clinic for a few minutes after lunch when I got a phonecall from the sister in maternity alerting me to the fact that a lady was about to deliver. Worried that I might miss it, I sprinted out of ARV and down through OPD, endangering the lives of many with my lightning/snail speed. On arrival I felt truly epic, until I saw the woman casually lying on the bed and got the sinking feeling that we would be there for a while.



Not long after, a similarly excited Sam came through the door after receiving a text from me saying 'Sam, birth, now!' which would have been more accurate if it said 'Sam, maybe this woman will give birth before we have to return to the UK'. We went and got a bench from the ward and sat and waited in the labour room for the next three hours, fun times. At one point we had a thumb war, which I reckon is high up there on the list of inappropriate things to do when a woman is trying to give birth...



A note about birth here, it's HECTIC. Most of the woman deliver with no family or friends present and without any analgesia whatsoever. We sat with a woman for three hours and during that time she did little more than groan quietly when her contractions came, the people here really are tough, and its nothing like the drama that you see on TV!



The patient we were sitting with was 7cm dilated when we got there and it was her first baby so it was actually unlikely she would deliver for about 3-4 hours. Pretty sure there was a miscommunication somewhere when they called me! We watched the sister do some PV exams, listened to the fetal heart rate etc etc but nothing much seemed to be happening anytime soon. Fortunately for us, the lady in the labour room next door was ready to go at half past six, so after watching one woman for nearly three hours, we swapped to see a different one deliver!



I could tell we were in business when Sam and I were told to don the sterile gloves and plastic apron ready for delivery. We brought our bench through and waited for the big moment, sweating away into the lovely powdered gloves [cue extreme rash on hands].Eventually, the woman felt that the time had come and suddenly the baby's head was there, and I was delivering a baby boy! :D



The baby was sooo cute [the mass of blood/placenta/rank fluid that exploded out with it was not] and we dried him and placed him under a heat lamp. He was lovely and healthy and had cried as soon as I pulled him out so there was no worries there. After cleaning him up and putting some ointment on his eyes to unstick them we weighed him [2850g], measured his head circumference [33.5cm] and his length [54cm]. The mum, who did nothing more than grit her teeth during the whole thing, had to get a bit of suturing done to repair the damage then got cleaned up and it was all over!



It was such a great experience and definitely something everyone should see. It was so cool to help deliver the baby and however cheesy it sounds, there's really something intense about when you pull that baby out and it cries for the first time :D Unforgettable.