Between the two of us, Lyanne and I assisted four mothers to birth their babies in two hours this morning. The first was lovely enough to name her beautiful baby daughter after us - Sarah Lillian (no one here can pronounce Lyanne's name). Unfortunately our first mother also went on to have a PPH. As Lyanne and I were working with one of the sisters to resolve the bleeding, I heard a call from the woman next door (and I should clarify that there are no doors anywhere - here in Mbale women are quite lucky actually, in that they have a half-wall partition and curtains between most of the beds which block sight, if not sound). This woman was having her second baby and was clearly well on her way to pushing baby out! I let Lyanne know what was going on and thankfully our first mom's bleeding had resolved and Lyanne was able to gather instruments and umbilical cord ties (otherwise known as the elastic cuffs off our sterile gloves). I caught baby, Lyanne arrived in time to be second attendant and I helped mom clean up. Just as I was preparing to chart, Lyanne was ready to catch yet another baby, and it was my turn to play second attendant. This baby needed some ventilation to get going, and as second that task fell to me. Thankfully baby came around with four minutes of PPV. I had just wrapped this baby up after weighing her and doing the newborn exam when YET ANOTHER woman began pushing out her baby on the bed closest to the infant warmer. This mother was having her first baby, but only took about half an hour to push out her baby. So we had:
Baby 1: born 09:30
Baby 2: born 09:50
Baby 3: born 10:30
Baby 4: born 11:20
With hardly any time to think and certainly none to chart in between! We are taking this afternoon off as well as tomorrow, and are looking forward to spending the day at the pool tomorrow, followed by seeing Alix and Carolyn tomorrow evening and sharing a meal with some of the student clinicians who we have gotten to know over the past couple weeks.
Posted by Sarah
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