"just come out!!"

it rained last night... annnddd a baby girl was born today at the clinic!! my hypothesis is fast on its way to becoming a theory :) this was a fun birth because Hilary and Maritess were the only midwives/nurses on at the clinic, which meant Lo and I played a big roll in the labor and delivery - sweet!! it was a very hands on experience... the poor mother was swaying back and fourth in pain, bent over the labor table with her head between her hands. she had just vomited up everything in her stomach (Hilary says they usually puke at 8cm because that is when the body stops digesting - fun fact! :)... she would rock her hips side to side between contractions, then fall into a deep squat as she tolerated the pain of the contraction in silence. we finally moved her to a yoga ball that she bounced on incessantly until a contraction, at which point she would lean far back and Lo, myself and her helper would do what we could to balance the ball and keep her from rolling off onto the ground... and this point she had starting groaning "just come out!!" in Cebuano - Hilary translated for us. I kept rubbing her lower back trying to ease the tension (we do this with most of the moms), and breathing loudly out to remind her to keep up with the deep breaths... Hilary and Maritess were now m.i.a. they had darted out of the room without explanation and our only instruction was to keep her breathing... not a problem right?... riiigghtt....

what felt like a half an hour later we had moved the patient to the delivery table because she was so ready to start pushing. she was telling us that she needed to use the CR (the comfort room, aka the bathroom) but that she was afraid because the baby felt so close to coming out.... wait, what?!! Lo and I glanced at each other wide eyed and exchanged silents looks of "sh!t?!!"... based on past births we have seen here we figured about two pushes and that baby would need someone to catch it before it landed in the discard bucket at our feet. Where were Hilary and Maritess?!! and neither of us was about to leave the other alone with the mom claiming her baby was "right at the opening", to go looking for Maritess or Hilary... just as I was pretty certain I was going to be able to say I've delivered a baby, Maritess came to our rescue. and, just as expected, that baby was out in a push and half - a healthy baby girl...

We had the cord clamped and the baby's vitals taken within seconds of delivery, then it was time to tend to the mother. the baby was big (around 7 or 8 lbs - that's really big here! - probably explained by the fact that the mother had been holding the baby in all holy week[end]... what'd i tell ya?!) and the uterus had a long way to contract down to it's normal size in order to stop the mother from hemorrhaging. This is probably my least favorite part of the delivery: when the poor patient, who has been through so much, has to endure more pain as you push as hard as you can on her uterus to ensure that it contracts down entirely and is firm... the mothers just cringe and say "enough!" but you can't stop because if you do the bleeding won't stop, and we've already discussed how difficult it is to get a blood transfusion around here. We gave this mother 4 shots of oxytocin - one in each arm and two through an IV we started right after the birth - to help the uterus return to its normal size (had she done a home delivery she would have bled to death).

It was a very exciting delivery and now i'm just hoping for more rain... because you know what the rain brings!!