Not So Text Book Perfect Deliveries

I have been officially volunteering at the clinic for ten days and have already put in 70 amazing hours in. I have learned so much in the last week and a half I can't imagine what my skills will look like by August 1st. I have volunteered 7 of the 10 days and have seen/charted for at least 12 births and practiced many other skills/assessments. God has been good to me and many others at the clinic.

Tuesday

At 6 am on Tuesday morning I started my day off with a scare. There was a labor progressing so I went into the birth room to observe. The mother was having trouble pushing the baby out but it soon came. Once the baby was out it was blue with little tone. An APGAR score of 2 out of 10 was yelled and our supervisor ran in. The students began PPV (positive pressure ventilation) with a hand bag hooked to O2. They did this for 9 minutes while another student got the transfer papers filled out and the ambulance ready. The mother was crying and I held back tears as I watched 7 staff members working together to handle the situation. The emotion in the room was overwhelming to me but the staff stayed strong and continued to stimulate the baby. When the hand bag was removed the baby was breathing on its own and was quickly transferred to the hospital so fast that the grandmother never made it to the ambulance to ride along! We got her to the hospital a little later. Before my shift ended I heard the baby was doing much better and it looked like every thing was going to be ok. Praise God! We stayed busy the rest of the shift with a few more deliveries. After my shift I walked home and realized Casey, Tilly and I were all off for once! We walked to the other gated community which we figured out has a very nice pool, tennis courts, and indoor basketball court. We went for a swim in the nice warm water before supper.

Wednesday

Today I was at the clinic a little after 7 for prenatal check ups. The staff and students begin their day with a small devotional before moving into a larger room with the clients. Next door where the clients are waiting we sing a few songs with them before they have a devotional and health teaching. After that is over, in about an hour, they file in a few at a time into the prenatal room where there are 6 beds for check ups. I again was paired with a student to practice my fetal heart rate monitoring and fundal height checks. Luckily most of our patients today spoke English but I need to work on my Visayan. Together we probably did prenatal check on 60-80 women today.

After that I headed over to the birth room where I started my swing shift at 2:00. We were busy all afternoon/night with about 3 births and a few postpartum patients. I should have been assisting for the births today but there were a few chaotic moments so the staff just had me chart during the births which was fine with me. I will start assisting tomorrow night. Our first birth went fine and I charted for that and the suturing afterward. Our next patient was a 16 year old girl who's boyfriend looked much older than her but he was funny and truly cared about her and the baby. As the patient pushed her water finally broke. A student began to monitor the fetal heart rate which began to drop. The normal is 120-160/min and this one dropped to 80/min. I became a little nervous and wondered if we would transport her if she was this far along. Our supervisor was in the room and was taking charge of the situation from a distance. We had the mother push a few more times and the baby did come out. It was a little blue with a cord wrapped around its neck but it began crying and with an APGAR score of 9 my heart could beat again. There were three women with this patient and her boyfriend dressed in head dresses. They were Muslim and the nicest people I have met yet! I was impressed on how good their English was and how talkative they were. I guess I had this impression that they would be shy and not make eye contact let alone talk to us. They seemed like amazing women so we will see how much more contact I have with them.

The evening was full of many surprises. Two American/Canadian girls showed up and the Filipino midwives began screaming. I guess they were students a few years ago and surprised everyone. One has a sister who is a student right now. They will be staying for a month and volunteering at the clinic while visiting friends they made. Soon after that surprise we heard someone outside yell "emergency!" I heard a siren and lights flashing and wondered what was going on. When I walked out the gate a I saw a ambulance looking truck that said police on the side. At least 10 people were filing out of the back yelling I'm not sure what. Three men were then carrying a woman inside. I kept looking for massive bleeding or something but saw nothing. The woman did not look completely with it and looked as though she might pass out. When we got her chart we found out she was blind and could not see. We laid her down in bed and did an internal exam. Turns out she was only 2cm so there was no rush. The group that came on the police truck were gypsies. They kept us pretty entertained for the rest of the night as we did them. They spoke a different dialect than our students so they would laugh when they the spoke and told the midwives they could not understand us. Although the woman was only 2cm we kept her because this was her 5th pregnancy so it could move fast and she was blind and would have trouble in the dark getting home and back to the clinic even with her entourage. Her chart said she had 4 other births but only one living child. When asked we asked her helpers what had happened they said they did not know her history. When I left my shift the woman was not close to giving birth yet. I got a ride home in our ambulance driven by one of the midwives and three other midwives who wanted to ride along. They are a funny bunch those Filipinos! Tonight they had the guard carry a tv from their housing in the clinic to our make shift clinic so they could watch a soap opera while we ate supper! One started crying while she was watching it! Haha they are so funny! As we were pulling away in the ambulance I saw our guard taking the tv back to their home. Those guards sure do spoil us!

I just realized it is one in the morning. I better get to bed because tomorrow morning I am heading to a different part of town for outreach. Sounds like we will be meeting more gypsies. Then I work night shift. Should be an exciting day!

Talk to you soon!
-Kelsey

Our awesome warm pool

Homemade bread with garlic butter made by our lovely cook

Singing before prenatals

Women waiting for prenatals

Students performing prenatals

Michelle and I..(A Filipino midwife)

My supervisor and I were trying to sneak a picture behind Michelle.

It didnt workout for us

We found out the girls have Hammocks so we tied one up.

We may be going 'camping' in a hut on some beach one day