Assisting

Sunday

Sunday morning I went to church with two other girls. We went to Victory Church in a different part of town. I'm not sure I would know how to get there again :) Might need some assistance next week. When church started there were only a few chairs filled but after a few songs it filled up. Almost every chair was taken. The service was in English and very contemporary. The pastor did a Father's Day sermon. It was interesting because he used statistics and famous people from the U.S. as examples. He gave examples like 36% of children in the US do not have a father in their life. 70% of fatherless children drop out of school. 70% of inmates in a juvenile institute come from fatherless homes. The statistics went on and on as the pastor made his point of how important it was for fathers to step  up and take responsibility for their families. He then quoted President Truman talked about Al Capone, Easy Eddie, and Butch O'hare. The pastor mainly focused on Easy Eddie, Al Capone's lawyer, and how he was providing for his family but it was not enough. Easy Eddie was able to provide his son with a huge house, food, education ect ect but he was not able to provide his son with a good name. His son would always have a tainted name from his dad helping Al Capone. Easy Eddie then stopped working for Al Capone and went against him in court. Al Capone was given jail time and Easy Eddie was soon assassinated. He paid the biggest price for his son but provided him with a good name in the end. Next the pastor talked about Butch O'hare's service in the Navy. Butch was flying fighter planes and was on a mission. He shot down some Japanese bombing planes before he himself was shot down. He became a hero and then the pastor told the congregation that Butch O'hare was Easy Eddie's son.

I worked swing shift so I went to work after lunch. We were busy! We had at least 5 labors come in. We sent at least three home and transferred one to the hospital for failure to progress. We did have two births which I got to assist with. My job was to take the fetal heart rate with the doppler after every contraction. When the head was finally out I wiped the face and placed the baby on the mom's stomach. I did APGAR scores at 1 and 5 minutes after birth. When the placenta was out I clamped the cord and allowed the family member to cut the cord. One grandmother would not cut the cord so I got to do it! After that I did fundal checks every 5 minutes for 30 minutes to make sure the uterus was firm and I had to estimate how much blood loss their was with each check. There is a higher risk for hemorrhaging with Asians so we massage the fundus every five minutes to make sure all the clots are out. When all of our checks were over I restocked the birth cart and started on some paperwork before doing a newborn exam. I learned so much assisting I was just amazed! There are a lot of things you can not pick up from just observing a birth. My first assist was a little overwhelming but my second one went much smoother. I am very excited for my next shift to do it again!

A few baby names I have heard so far:
(first name only)
Queen Elizabeth
Cris Paul
Sarah Joy

*One morning around 5:30am I was heading to the clinic with a roommate when an elderly lady who was on a walk stopped us. She informed us that she was going to be having a party at her house in a week and wanted us to come. She pointed down the street to where she lived and told us the date and time. She was adorable! Hopefully some of us will be able to make an appearance.

All the seats were filled once the service started

Cris Paul my first assist