Qualified, Licensed, Degree...what's that? Know what you're doing...hmmmm maybe :)

Date: 1-26-08

After delivering two newborns last night, prescribing Quinine perfusion drips, performing a cesarean, amputating a gangrene leg, suturing a head wound...okay so maybe the cesarean, amputation, and head wound part isn't true. But you never know the day when it might become true because you don't have a choice. All the deliveries I've ever done were as the baby was falling to the ground...but last night brought a new experience....a 22 yr. old woman in labor at 2:30 AM and with her previous delivery only made possible by a symphysitomy (cutting the pelvis bone). When I first checked her I could feel the hair on his head as he started the decent into what I hoped was now a big enough space for him to get through. It was just Sonya and I there to help her through her labor...good thing she didn't know I'd only caught falling babies...never helped deliver a difficult one. She never once screamed...just held onto her legs and moaned...as a headful of hair made a difficult entrance into a lantern lit room. Blood and meconium gushed out onto the table over the baby's head and off onto the floor. his shoulder's where stuck. I grabbed the bulb syringe to try and get as much poo as possible out of his mouth before he aspirated it and told Sonya to go get James. By the time he had arrived...I'd somehow figured out the way to turn him and out he popped screaming. That made for the 2nd birth of the night...aided by a social worker and a nurse who'd only caught falling babies.

"God does not call the equipped but equips the called."