Catch Me If You Can

As anyone who is remotely familiar with the hospital labor/delivery scene will know, it's true that the nurse does practically everything until the MD shows up with the catcher's mitt. Well, a few weeks ago I got that "wonderful" experience that every L/D RN will have at least once (if not more) in her career. I got to catch the baby.

Now, I have delivered a baby once in nursing school... of course "Mom" was a mannequin with a mechanical track running down her back and baby was made of plastic. So, needless to say, it's nothing like the real thing. Real people are a lot... squishier, to name one difference. Anyway, it was a routine pitocin induction for a second time mom. Now, I may not have been working too long in this area, but I have learned a thing or two about when delivery time is close. With the epidural rate for women at IHC hospitals running about 90%, this can be a bit trickier. However, there are two good hints that baby is getting close: Mom complains of pressure (which the epidural cannot take away) and baby's heart beat slows down along with contractions and comes back up again.

Mom was as happy as a clam, epidural working perfectly. Admittedly it had been a while since her cervix had last been checked, but as baby looked great and there were no complaints of pressure, we just mosied along. When mom said she was feeling a tiny bit of back pain, and could she get a redose, I thought nothing of it. The anesthesiologist got her all nice and comfy and then I noticed that that baby just wouldn't stay on the monitor. I finally decided just to check the mom's cervix, thinking that we must be getting close. Apparently all that was holding that baby in was the fact that the mom's legs were closed, because as soon as I moved them, there was that bluish-black, gooey little head making his way into the wide world. As I am unfamiliar with the set up of these hospital rooms (therefore not knowing where the emergency button is) I had to run out to the nurses' station yelling, "She's crowning! She's crowning!"

I had just enough time to run back in and pull that baby out. The midwife got there pretty quickly after that... but all the fun was over by then! Fortunately both mom and baby were a-ok, and now I can say that I have delivered a baby with my own two hands. What a day!

It's Official

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have officially joined the in-crowd-- or at least we have submitted our application. Thanks to my brother Tim, we now have our very own blog. From here on out we can publish the details of our very small lives to the world at large. Kind of scary, isn't it? I can't guarantee that it will always be worth the two minutes you'll spend browsing it while skimming through the lists of blogs linked to your own site, but at least it will give me something to do when I'm off work and Lance is busy studying. So, dear reader, press on if you dare!

A New Blog For Heather and Lance!

You can delete this post as soon as you want. Just wanted you to get a feel for the blog. You can ask Cindy where she got her template if you don't like this one.