Last Monday, I got to go to the Hospital with my midwife friend, Jane *(name changed for privacy), and shadow her for the day. I got there and hung out for about five minutes before she said, “Hey! You want to see a C-section?” I pretty much peed in my pants I was so excited.
My Very First C-Section:
Put on scrubs and felt VERY important and yet, like an imposter. Put on my face-mask inside out and promptly stopped feeling important. The OB operating room is two rooms – the actual OR and a little extra room where the baby warmer/resucitation stuff is. While they prepped the lady, I stood in the little side room, watching through the big window. She was crying while they anesthetized her – I don’t blame her. She planned for a natural birth and then her baby’s heart rate dropped down to 30 consistently and they did an emergency C-section. I would cry to.
So they put her under general anesthesia (because she had not had an epidural since she was going the natural route) – plus I think she was so upset that she did not want to be awake. The dad did not get to go in with her because she was under general. Once she was all ready, they brought me in and put me right next to the doctor. I got a front row seat – the nurses kept asking me nervously if I was going to be OK – had I seen this before? – Did I feel faint? And with those masks on, you can’t really tell what a person’s facial expression is like so it is very hard to read people’s emotions/state of mind. I kept trying to reasure them that, not only was I OK, but that it was the neatest, most greatst experience I had had in a long time. Finally, once they saw me trying to stick my head in closer to get a good look and asking all sorts of questions about cutting through muscle, uterus, etc., they left me alone.
Blood, blood everywhere. There is a ton of it! You don’t know until you see it how you are going to react, and I was very happy to see that it did not phase me at all. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the whole messy aspect of it – our bodies are just so neat! It was great to get to watch all the OR interactions between the doctor, the nurses, the surgical tech, etc. Most of the nurses’ job is to sop up blood and hand tools to the doctor. Glad I am going to be a nurse-midwife and don’t have to do that stuff – not that it is not a great job – but I like the idea of having my own patients and not just doing support staff work.
They pulled Mr. Baby out and he did not have a cord around the neck so they think that his cord was being compressed (they broke her bag of waters earlier so there was less fluid in there to float around in) – he came out not breathing and I got to watch the pediatric doctor and nurses revive him using lots of machines and bags – I know this sounds awful but it is very hard to seperate the humanity of the situation from the medical aspect of it. I knew this baby was laying there not breathing, but I was too fascinated by the whole resucitation process and by the whole experience to really comprehend the severity of it all. In any event, he started breathing and got all pink pretty soon.
I then went back into the OR and got to watch the VERY slow process of stiching the mom up. It seemed to take an excessively long time, but it was my first time at a C-section so who knows. Oh, the Dad was kind of an asshole – but he was under a lot of stress and assholishness might not be permanent thing for him. The nurses didn’t like him though and said he was really unpleasant to them.
Next Birth:
Teenager, first baby. Grandma (of the baby being born – mom of the birthing mom) and cousin were in the room. They had been there for 9 hours before she started pushing, which is not long at all really. Jane was nervous that we were going to walk in and she was still going to be 4 cm. but we got there and she was 10 and ready to push.
The whole scene was amazing. The grandma was young enough to be having the baby herself and was SOOOOOO wonderful with her daughter. She was very supportive and loving and kept the girl so focused. She had an epidural but near the end it was wearing off and she did an amazing job pushing and was very quiet and composed. It only took 45 minutes and, since the baby had one of those fetal scalp electrodes, we got to watch the wire slowly slip out as the babies head made its way down. I started tearing up a bit when I saw how much the daughter relied on her mom because it was just a wonderful thing to see a girl finding that kind of support during her first birth.
The mom coached her better than any doula could. Finally, the head started to glisten a bit right at the opening and we could tell he would come out soon – but not quite as soon as he did! Jane put on her catching outfit – a funny green suit and gloves/goggles – and in one push the baby had slipped his way out. From the moment we saw his head to the moment he was out was abut 1 minute.
It happened so quickly that the girl tore pretty badly. It started at the base of her vagina, inside, and stretched all the way up her labia to the top. One of her labia was pretty much split in two – Luckily, she did have the epidural and Jane numbed her up locally with something. While grandma and the cousin loved the baby up, Jane let me watch her do the stiching – I got to get in really close and really see how it is done. I was very nervous about that aspect of the job (the stiching), but after watching it, I know it is something I can do.
Afterwards, Jane just told me that you can’t think about the actual thing that just happened (the tear) because you start to feel it yourself (I was definitely feeling protective of my vagina after watching a needle pass in and out of some labia a few times). Your job is to make it better. I think that after seeing a few more, I will be totally fine with it.I am SO READY to go to school now. I want to spend all day, every day, with women giving birth. All the time. There is no better job in the world! It is different EVERY day, you get to meet different people every day, you get to see the coolest thing that happens to a person, you get to be part of one of the most important aspects of life, every day. . .definitely not a monotonous job.
