Crazy Day - part 2

Karissa and I finally got an night of uninterrupted sleep last night. It was simply splendid - except for some reason I was suddenly wide awake... Oh well.

When I woke up this morning, I discovered that one of Karissa's COCs was in labor so we vacated the room for her. I charted for the birth and one really interesting thing was that the mom sang. She sang during contractions, in between contractions, and even when the baby was being born. She was singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as the baby slipped into the world. It was beautiful.

By that time, another mom had walked in and was ready to push. I gloved up and Ate Lyds and I caught the baby. It was a big baby - 3.2kg (normally, babies are 2-something kg.)

Then, just as I was heading for the apartment to re-fill my waterbottle, I noticed a car stop right outside the birth center and two men and a woman, very obviously in labor, got out and so I quickly led them inside. They were at church when the mom's labor started and they came straight from church so she didn't have her chart. Her husband raced to their home to find her chart while the second man, who turned out to be their pastor, stayed behind with the mom.

I didn't realize it was the pastor who had stayed behind so figured it was the husband. As I was trying to gather information on who this mom was, while she was in the bathroom, I asked the man what her name was. Except, I asked him what his wife's name was.

He gave me a very blank stare.

So I asked him in Tagalog, as best as I could.

His stare became even more blank.

I was starting to think, "ok, what language does this man speak then?" when Karissa laughed and said, "that's the pastor not the husband."

Oops... *hide under the rug in shame*

Anyway, the mom was fully dilated and started pushing. The pastor acted as her support through most of it, until her *real* husband returned. Then her baby girl slipped easily into my arms. The actual birth was unique (well, all births are unique,) because there was both a cord around the baby's neck and a compound presentation, where the kid's hand is trying to come out at the same time as the head.

All was well with all three moms and I attended a total of 3 births in five hours.

Also, I went through my records and have attended a grand total of 33 births and have caught 20 babies since getting to Shiphrah. Counting my births in the States as well, I have attended 49 births and have caught 21 babies.

Tomorrow a new intern comes. That should be interesting. :-D

this is Mangosteen - a very sweet fruit. It looks like garlic cloves, but is soft and squishy and extremely sweet. However, it's really good for you and is supposedly really expensive to purchase in the States. It's fairly cheap out here.