Meconium Happens

Dec. 28
Meconium Happens

This day started out just as crazy. We had 8 total deliveries today…a near record. We had 5 moms on the floor in cots, two on beds, and more laboring outside. We got all the moms home except for the laboring ones of course. Poor Marilou had seen all these mom come and go and she was still laboring with poor progress. We knew they had no money to transfer them to the hospital and the baby’s heart-rate was fine. At around noon we put her up in stirrups to find her fully dilated. The midwife broke her membranes to find copious amounts of thick, smelly, meconium-filled amniotic fluid. (FYI: Meconium is a baby’s first BM) Terrible! We needed to get this one out pretty fast…nice thought, but it didn’t happen. The midwife tried everything: lithotomy, left side, birthing stool, all of it to no avail. (Left is the midwife playing the waiting game. Even Ming-Ming, the cat, got in on the action! see below) It just wasn’t coming. It looked like it should be a problem but for some reason Marilou just couldn’t push it out! We transferred her back to the table and into stirrups for an episiotomy. (A controlled slice to make sure the mom doesn’t tear where she shouldn’t.) Finally the baby slipped out at 1:30pm. It was extremely yellow with peeling skin from all the meconium. I suctioned it’s mouth and got out extremely thick brown mucous…meaning it had swallowed and inhaled the fluid, a very bad thing. Then it went from bad to worse. The mom continued to hemorrhage. She lost nearly 1 liter of blood. The midwife started an IV and we got fluids running in. After she was somewhat stable, we transferred her to a bed. To make a longer story short, the little boy had rapid respirations so we called out a missionary doctor and got it started on Gentamicin and Ampicillin. It threw up everything but this isn’t that unusual considering it was trying to get rip of all the goop. The mom stabilized and was able to go home the next day. The little guy now comes back twice a day for injections and check-ups. He looks great! He’s eating and keeping it down.

On a side note, I must say that for this being the father’s mistress, he was super attentive. He stayed by her side through her whole labor doing whatever she needed. He’s come to the clinic twice a day with the baby for the injections…not just sent it with someone else. He has asked lots of questions. It’s sad that he has five other kids with his wife and that this son is with a mistress, but as of now, it looks like he’ll be a good daddy. (below is mec baby cleaned up)