When It Rains, It Pours

Dec. 29

There’s a saying I’m sure you’re all familiar with: when it rains, it POURS. We had 8 more deliveries today. One of the midwives accused me of praying that I’d see a lot of deliveries. I didn’t! I promise!
We had three more post-partum hemorrhages, which meant three more IVs. I hate starting IVs over here! They are just straight needles…no plastic catheter. Which means the needle stays in the whole time, which means it’s painful and infiltrates very easily! But, I got all three started first try and they stayed it until I took them out. Whew!
The first PPH was with a mom’s five baby. The dad asked me what the sex was and was extremely disappointed it was a girl. They have a boy but he wanted another one. When he came back 6 hours later to check on his wife, he was raging drunk. So sad.
The second PPH was secondary from horrible clots. Once we got those out, the mom was fine. BUT, this was her first baby and it was breech! They got it delivered no problems, but it sure made for another adrenaline rush. Unfortunately, I was napping during the delivery and missed it.
The last PPH of the day was with another primip. (First baby) When we went to check her, we thought she’d be 3cm because she was walking around, smiling, and silent. WRONG! She was complete and crowning. Then all the fun started. Whenever we told her to push, she started crying and trying to crawl up the table…she was terrified! She kept yelling, “Hindi ko kaya!, Hindi ko kaya!” (“I can’t do it!”) In between one of her contractions I grabbed her hand, stared her down, and said, “Kaya ko” (“I can”). I had her repeat it over and over throughout her contractions. We finally got her baby out, but she tore terribly and bled 800cc’s. In these little Filipina women, that’s a pretty big deal. Her blood pressure dipped to 60/40. As soon as I got the IV started and fluids running, she was fine.
And I can’t write about today without mentioning the cephalhematoma I saw. It was textbook. It’s all a blur now, but I think it was with the mom who was afraid to push. Because the baby was engaged for so long and was pushed against ineffectively, the skull was subjected to a lot of trauma, which caused massive swelling and bleeding between the skin and skull. Fortunately, this usually isn’t serious and goes down within a week or so.