No Crowning Babies....Yet.

Every omen prior to clinical today pointed to bad, horrible, terrible things in my future.

Anyone who has ever spent the night with me knows how anal I am about checking, re-checking, and checking once more to make sure that my alarm clock is set and ready to go. Well, much to my surprise last night I realized that the reason why I had missed three alarms in the last two weeks was due to the fact that my phone no longer makes sound. At all. But, never fear my friends. I'm basically like MacGyver Part Two because not only did I set the alarm on my stove for six hours of "bake time" but I put my vibrate-capable phone in a pint glass so that when my mom called at 5:00 to try and wake me up, an audible ringing would drift through my apartment. It was pretty epic. Turns out the stove woke me up just fine and my pint glass 'o magic was not necessary. So that was bad.

Then, I forgot my stethoscope. Seriously, it's got to be the most basic thing in the world but I was without it. So my faculty instructor lent me hers. Which was wonderful because it came in very handy with my first assignment...

My first patient had just delivered a baby cesarean (c/s from here on out ever in the history of this blog) two hours prior to my arrival. So, I got to do lots of cute new baby things like taking vitals, swaddling, and giving Baby Girl her first bath ever! The experience was wonderful, adorable, and a little emotional. Perhaps it was all of the anxiety of the last three weeks culminating to my teary eyed moments. Perhaps it was the always incredible sight of a grown man telling his mom for the first time over the phone that he is the father of a healthy baby girl and uncontrollably crying (it's powerful if you have yet to witness it). Whatever the cause, it was hard not to cry as I interacted with this tiny infant and I got emotional. Prediction: I'm going to be a wreck with my own future (underscore future) babies.

On that note of future babies, working in OB is the best contraception ever. Every teenage girl and boy should have to see some of these things. Teen pregnancy rates would drop dramatically, I am for certain.

I was supposed to get to scrub in for a schedule cesarean but for reasons unknown, the mother never showed up. She re-scheduled for tomorrow but I was disappointed that I didn't get to see a live surgical birth. Le boo.

My second, and main patient, of the day was a woman in labor with her first child. It was pretty exciting because she was excited and her husband was adorably anxious. For most of the morning we monitored her contractions and the coinciding fetal heart rate, which was exciting and grand. Then she decided the pain was too much and needed an epidural, pretty standard. But, the cool part was that I got to watch! It wasn't weird, the anesthesiologist was hilariously over-dramatic (remind me and I'll re-enact his swishing of vials motion), and the needle was a lot smaller than I imagined. Smaller in the sense that it's still a pretty damn big needle to go into such a sensitive space, but in my fantastical brain I had visualized a needle slightly smaller than a thumb. I don't know why, it's just how my brain thinks.

About an hour after her legs became all numbly and full of tingles, I got to insert her catheter. Lordy bee was I nervous for this one! I've practiced on mannequins and I'm a pro at maintaining a sterile field, but actually doing one on a real person is totally different. And stinky. No unexpected smells for a laboring woman, but sometimes it was hard not to make a face and for that I feel bad. Anywho, the procedure went swimmingly and luckily for me she couldn't feel anything because of las drogas. But, I feel cool and accomplished because I got to do something pretty neat-o.

From here on out it was pretty standard procedure of checking in with mom and family. She was dilating about 1cm every hour until...BAM. She jumped from 5cm to 9 cm. It was exciting, scary, and just bizarre and my little hopes got all raised up that I would get to see a birth. I even held a leg as she pushed and tried to make Little Baby work his/her way down the birthing canal. However, sad day when we realized Little Baby wasn't going anywhere yet and I had to go home for the day.

All in all, it was a very good first day of clinicals! So much fun, lots of downtime, but mostly lots of fun! Also, as a side note, we took bets to see what time my patient was going to give birth and I called 2:30 PM. When I left it was 2:15 so there is a relatively good chance that I won, but I could have also been way off.

On next weeks episode:
-Did I call the birthing time right?
-Will I wake up on time?
-How many mother/baby post-partum assessments will I complete in 8 hours?

Stay tuned.