maternity unit adventures

My maternity rotation finished this weekend. The next adventure will be pediatrics beginning in January.

It was a very different world being with healthy patients; for many, this was their first hospital experience. After seeing many labors (and sometimes birth!) my perceptions of hospitals being places for birth has changed. The whole process has become one of total unnaturalness. Drugs for contractions, drugs for dilation, drugs for pain, unnecessary panic, and then there's the actual pushing. This involves mom lying on her back (in a side tilt) without any help from gravity just so the doctors can get a better look. In most cases, mom surrenders all her control to the staff so they can run the show by their own agenda. However, that's not to say hospitals are horrible places for birth; for complications (and often unexpected ones) they can be LIFE SAVERS. But, it seems like they have lost total balance. Everything has become somewhat of an emergency with a need for unnecessary interventions.

Maternity was also somewhat of an eye opener. I had heard of all the stories but to actually see it and experience it was a whole new world... major, major lacerations to the vagina, episiotomies, pooping during birth, baby coming out covered in their own poop (meconium), major hemorrhoids, hemorrhage, uteruses falling out of the vagina, & bloody show --- most of which are VERY common and expected. I'm so grateful to my patients for allowing me to experience all of this with them.

I can't even begin to describe the moments when the babes finally popped out. The very first time I caught myself saying "aww" outloud. Every time I saw a delivery, that moment was a.m.a.z.i.n.g and very surreal.

There was definitely some heartache too. We had a patient who lost her baby and was schedule to come in and deliver. She was assigned to be my patient (my instructor paid me the biggest compliment when she said she couldn't imagine assigning anyone different; she felt my calmness and compassion would be a benefit to the mother). Unfortuantely, the nursing manager didn't feel right about a student being part of that situation (even though the patient was very open to a student) so I didn't actually get to be in the room with her. There was also a baby that died in the NICU that same day so there was a lot of heartache on the floor.

I wanted to save this link (and pass it on to anyone interested in understanding the process of delivering a fetal demise): http://allnurses.com/nursing-articles/caring-family-suffering-284177.html