Day 8: Labor and Delivery

This shift was a very interesting day in the Labor and Delivery department. Right when I got there I rushed and put on scrubs and a cap and scrubs on my shoes too and I was rushed into an OR room and watched a c-section. The doctor told me to stand against the back wall where I could see everything, but sit down if I got light headed. This lady was a pretty heavy lady and I watched the doctor cut through a lot of layers of fat in her stomach before he got to the baby. It was really cool to see the inside of her stomach and the actual fat as gross at that is. It was a lot of cutting that the doctor had to go through to get to the actual baby. Although she was numb and couldn't feel anything that was going on down there, the doctor was being very fast and almost slightly harsh with her body and it was making me feel uncomfortable because I felt as if she could feel it. He kept reaching his entire hand and arm in her stomach to try and pull the baby out. Her husband and a couple other nurses were behind the curtain blocking her from seeing what was going on and they were comforting her. The doctor reached in a pulled the baby out of her stomach. Then, the coolest part, the doctor reached in and got her uterus and pulled it out of the inside of her stomach and laid it on the outside of her belly. I saw the two tubes and watched as he stitched her up. As he was doing this the lady was throwing up a lot which was really gross and made me sweat. He sewed her up and then they moved her to a new bed to take her to a recovery room. It all happened so fast and you could tell this team has done this procedure numerous times. All the while, there was a nurse taking care of the baby and the dad taking pictures. It was so much different than a delivery in a normal hospital room. It was such a cold room and not a warm and loving environment in the OR room to have a baby. I felt sorry for the woman. I went home and told my mom about the procedure because she had a c-section with my older sister but she didn't know what anything looked like or what was happening because she was numb and her stomach was blocked off. I realized every delivery can look totally different, and take different times and can be a completely different experience for every couple.