A baby was born!-August 6th, 2012

Today we left for the hospital at about 8 am, it took about 45 minutes for us get to there because the traffic is terrible in the mornings. There are quite a few traffic jams all over, we took some off roads that were gravel, and they were very bumpy! Once we got there we had to wait for a couple hours, while the administration took our fee and got us some letters that allowed us to work in any ward that we wanted. My group started in the maternity ward. For about 2 hours there weren’t any women that came in and the staff said this was really unusual because normally all of their rooms are full. At about 11 am we finally got our first patient. When she first got their they took her in for an examination and checked to see how far she was dilated. They then moved her to a labor room. When she entered, she striped down and all they have for privacy is a curtain that is hanging up and half the time it doesn’t get shut all the way. The doctors kept checking how far dilated the woman was, she was about 8 cm so we just waited. We went in to check on her and they were trying to get her water to break and when they got it too, a bunch of bright green/yellow stuff came out, which is not normal, the baby had a bowel movement and later we found out the mother was over her due date. Since that happened the doctors decided to move her to an emergency room, where women are put when they have complicated pregnancies. While we waited for her to fully dilated to push, one of the midwives was looking over her files and saw a letter from another hospital. On the letter it said that when they saw her, the cord was wrapped around the babies neck. After a long debate and blood was drawn for testing, they decided to take her for a C-section. It took about 2 hours for them to get her up to surgery and started. This was hard for me to handle because in the U.S. the mother would have been rushed right away and had an emergency C-section right away especially after the bowel movement happened. I thought that the baby wasn’t going to have a chance. They started by applying anesthetic drugs to put the mother to sleep. They then made a horizontal incision right in the pelvic region. They had to cut through many layers to get the uterus. The doctors pulled open the opening to make it bigger, which looked gruesome. They then reached the uterus, made an incision, reached in, and pulled the baby out. The baby was covered in the fecal matter and didn’t cry, so I had for sure thought the baby wasn’t ok. We later found out the baby was living and was ok. The doctors then pulled out the uterus and cleaned it out and also cleaned out the blood inside the abdominal cavity. They then proceeded to suture up the uterus and put it back in. They then sutured up the muscles and the abdominal cavity, once complete they sutured up the outer skin layer. They finished up by cleaning up the mess and wiping the blood off the mother. Surgeries here are pretty different compared to the U.S.  The surgeons are pretty much the only ones that are really sterile. The others in the room don’t have to scrub in, they just have to be wearing protective clothing such as scrubs, boots, caps, gloves and a face mask. They have the bare minimum they need for the surgery to take place such as the  surgical tools, a monitor/respirator, a small operating table, lights above the table, some sterile towels to cover the patient and a bucket they dispose the used gauze and other things in. It doesn’t look very sterile; some people don’t wear gloves and everyone in the room is allowed to go in and out of the room as they please. It will definately take a little getting used to after shadowing doctors in the U.S.