November 20th turned out to be quite an exciting day in the birth room. I delivered the 3rd baby on our shift - John Carlo, to 25 year old Nancy. Little John was not so little...in fact, he is a good two pounds heavier than his older siblings were at birth. So he had shoulder dystocia on his way out. Shoulder dystocia is an emergency situation where the baby's shoulders cannot actually fit through the pubic bone. After the head comes, we try to have the body out in less than a minute. Little John's shoulders took us almost two minutes to un-stick. My supervisor had to do supra-pubic pressure (looks sort of like the Heimlich maneuver but a little lower down) while I tugged and tugged. Our chubby little boy ended up weighing just over 8 pounds (which is very big for here).
An hour or so later, Starla (a student) had a rather interesting delivery also. Elai and I assisted in her delivery of an even bigger boy (8lbs 3oz) to a Tes, who actually pushed out her baby while she was standing up and leaning over onto her husband. Starla just kept repeating "Slippery!" as she was trying to catch him. It was quite funny. His cord was wrapped around his neck once and his body twice!
We were very glad Elai was the supervisor on duty with us. We both love working with her and she's an awesome teacher and even more amazing midwife. The three of us made quite the team yesterday!
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