baby oh baby

Oh what a way to start off the trip. I will only tell you this story at first, because that will be enough. When I was first getting shown around, at 830, we saw a woman who was fully dilated but having no contractions. Later on in the day, during rounds, at about 11, the nurse came over to saw that even with the pitocin on at full there were no contractions. We went to go see her and decided to do a c-section. The c-section didn’t start for awhile because the doctor couldn’t place the spinal anesthesia. Finally he decided to just give her general anesthesia (ketamine). Then the doctor asks me if I can resuscitate a baby. Yikes! There were a lot of nurses around so I figured they would help….wrong. The incision wasn’t big enough and then the baby slipped back in and they couldn’t get him. The amniotic fluid was yellow rather than clear. When they got him out, he was grey. They flipped him upside down, suctioned his mouth and handed him to me. The nurses was of resuscitating is to hold the baby by their feet upside down and slap the back. Probably works sometimes, but not when you’ve used ketamine and been in stage 2 labor for 5 hours. So I start bagging and telling them to rub vigorously. They pat his head. He has a heartbeat. I had to bag him for 25 minutes before he started breathing. They immediately wanted to take him somewhere else. I said yes because I was hoping it had a warmer since he was still blue and cold. We walked outside for a 5 minute walk to the maternity ward. The nurse put him in the warmer. Then the oxygen with the canula wasn’t working. So I had to bag again. Finally oxygen working. Baby is getting warmer. Now has retractions, nasal flaring, stridor, abdominal breathing. I suction every few minutes getting yellow amniotic fluid out. After an hour, he starts having tone in his legs. After three hours, he has slight tone in his arms. No reflexes. All this time I am on my own, with a nurse popping in and watching and then leaving. I kept asking when the doctor was coming and they kept saying soon. Then they said he was went home for lunch. And they refused to call him. You can probably guess how I feel about that, so I won’t say anymore. At three and a half hours after the baby was born with still no crying or reflexes, I found the doctor, who said “oh well, probably asphyxiation. You can only give him oxygen with a canula”. And that has been my first day.