A Crowning Head...of sorts.

I can now officially say that I have witnessed a c/s. While I think that its amazing that they can do it as quickly as they can based on years of perfecting techniques, I kind of hope that I myself don't have to get any. It was still a very moving experience and I had to fight back tears, but it also felt sterile and impersonal. With vaginal deliveries there is more of a tension built up through all the pushing and it feels more intimate. But it was kind of weird to just be like "snip snip pop! baby here!" Ideally, I would like to have vaginal deliveries with no epidural so that I can be fully present in the moment and to not risk endangering my babies, but given the track record of women in my family I'm won't be allowed to delivery vaginally. Anyways, aside from the smell of burning, it was still a neat experience and Baby Boy did very well!

The rest of my day was spent working in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. It was a fairly slow day as my set of twins were stable as was the baby girl I was also assigned to. The parents were there most of the time so that limited my ability to really interact with the babies, but it was educational nonetheless.

I got to see what a 28 week baby looks like as one had recently been delivered in the L+D unit. It's scary how underdeveloped 28 week babies are. Just for reference, a baby is considered at term when it has completed 37 weeks, or the start of the 38th week. That's ten weeks pre-term. That's 2 and a half months. That's not supposed to happen. But, so far baby was doing just fine. It was kind of cool because they had a catheter an artery in the umbilical cord because they can get blood samples this way without continually having to poke the baby with needles. Since this little bebe had a long stay ahead of her I thought this was neat!

Aside from the c/s, the highlight of my day was getting to take vitals, change a poopy diaper, and feed and snuggle an at term baby who was in the NICU because of high bilirubin levels. He was absolutely adorable and the sweetest little boy in the world. He was even more adorable because when the bili bed was turned on (light therapy to help rid him of excess bilirubin) he had to wear these foam sunglasses to protect his eyes. Baby's first stunner shades. I like snuggling and I like babies, but I know I won't be ready for quite some time!

Well, I'm super wiped. These days take so much energy out of me! Next week I'm in L+D again so maybe I'll get to see some more babies being birthed!