Soaked with Amniotic Fluid

It's Saturday night around midnight, I'm laying on the couch reading, thinking I'm getting tired and it's time to go to bed soon. And then my phone rings. Lady in labor, plus someone who has been induced. I quick change and head to the hospital. Lady 1 is a primip who is almost complete, but she has this tiny lip on her cervix that won't get over the baby's head. Dr. V pushes it over while we hear a chain of obscenities come from the lady's mouth. All of a sudden, the baby starts moving down really fast and her pushes are good ones. (Yes there's a difference between a good and bad push. You want to push like you have to poop, but many women think they're going to poop so don't really do that. Oh yeah, and there's often pooping involved. Gross.) I get gowned up and sit on the foot of the bed. I get the baby out, hand her over to the nurses, and start working on the placenta. We have to draw blood out of the umbilical cord to send to the lab. Each doctor does it different and how I was taught was to drain it into the tubes. Here, they take a needle and syringe and draw it out from the cord. Well, I'm not very comfortable or skilled at this. LOL. I poked a hole through the vein and the poor lady had a nice splatter of blood all over her. Oops. Anyways, I get the placenta out and go stand up to take it over to the bin. This is when I realize that my ass is soaked. Now since I'm positive I didn't pee my pants, there is only one thing that I could be soaked with-amniotic fluid and blood. Here's the worst part: I can't do a damn thing about it until I'm done. So finally, a half hour or so later I get to change....have to go commando because my underwear is also soaked. Sweet.

Alright, lady 2 is not progressing very well and her blood pressure keeps spiking, so Dr. V tells me I can go try to sleep in the on call room. Well I tried, but it didn't work out very well. Around 6:30 I get up to go see what's going on. Lady 1 has a hematoma which needs to be evacuated in the OR. Ladies and gentlemen, her vulva was the size of a grapefruit. So we get to the OR and the chunks of blood that come out....wow...good thing this kind of stuff doesn't bother me.

We finish up with her and go check on Lady 2. Unfortunately, she is just not progressing well enough so we offer her a c-section. It is now 9 am. I came in at 12:30 with half ass sleeping involved for 2 hours. I'm exhausted. We're ready to start surgery when Dr. V hands me the scalpel. "Ok Jen, time to get that brain moving since you're about to cut into a woman." That's enough to wake up someone. Anyways, I got the baby out but it was difficult because he was kind of big and his shoulders were tough to maneuver. I did a lot of suturing although I was much slower than normal. After surgery, Dr. V offered me the opportunity to go home and sleep. I snatched that up really quick.

So here I am, back on the couch waiting for a phone call because there is one who is about 5 cm and I just know it will be another late night. I took a 4.5 hour nap so hopefully I have enough brain power to deliver a baby and not get soaked.

FYI- when I say ladies, for the most part these women are under 25. Once in awhile, I'll get an older lady.

Any questions?