Post-hump day

Hump day was big.
Basically spent the morning organising our own timetables for O&G.
This involved organising changes in PBL dates/times and booking in with clinics and GP placements, though some of us didn"t have our GP placement dates/locations yet, which made things really annoying as we tried to keep the afternoons free in case our GP placement was on one of those days.

Worst organised rotation ever.

I ended up spending the afternoon trying to chase up my GP placement and finally managed to.

Today I had swapped with a fellow student to be on the Birthing and Assessment Suite for the day.
I wasn"t expecting much to happen, as many previous students had mentioned that they had gone through all of O&G without seeing a NVB (or normal vaginal birth for those that aren"t up to date with the TLAs).

So I showed up at 7am, totally awake and ready for a long day of sitting around (I wasn"t really). The midwifery handover was as to be expected, lots of names and things I hadn"t heard of before. The medical handover at 8am was the same.
Soon afterwards though, following the medical team around, we checked on a woman who had her membranes rupture 2 weeks ago (PPROM) when she was about 31+2.
Apparently the thing to do in this case is just to chill out and balance the risks of infection vs the problems of prematurity. So they chilled.

Flashforwards to today and the expectant mother is at 34+3, over the majority of problems and probably more at risk with infections, so it was decided that it was time.

The registrar introduced me to the husband and wife and asked if it was alright for me to tag along with her for her birth. She was quite non-committal (apparently she had been hounded by medical students for the 2 or so weeks she"s been in hospital), but I got a vague consent.

Approximately 10:30am, I went in to properly introduce myself and ask again for consent, and she was quite agreeable. I think it was partly due to the NO gas.

Not long after, her contractions got stronger and more frequent. Action time!

Long story short:
At 10:57am on Thursday the 20th of May, 2010, a beautiful little girl weighing 4.2 pounds was born as a normal vaginal birth. Apgar scores were 8 and 9 for the healthy pink looking baby, though there was slight nasal flaring.

That was the pretty part.

What came next was the placenta. Not so pretty.
Did you know that they keep the placenta (double bagged) in a fridge in case the parents want to take it home? Not weird at all. Totally not weird at all.