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Saturday, February 13, 2010

Newborn babies

Expectant moms are suppose to come to the hospital with a baby growing inside of them and leave the hospital carrying that baby home. Unfortunately, it doesn't always happen that way, which was the case today. I was called because a mom had been pushing for an hour and the baby hadn't come out yet. She wasn't pushing well, and she still had another hour before I really needed to worry about it, so I encouraged the nurses to keep working with her while I was just next door doing a D&C. After the D&C, the pt had made progress, the head was crowning, and she just needed a little help with a vacuum. So I put on the vacuum, mom pushed and out came the baby and a large amount of thick brown fluid - meconium. Instead of getting the baby to breathe right away, I worked on suctioning the baby to try and avoid aspiration of the meconium. Then we worked on warming her and getting her to breathe, but she didn't, and her heart wasn't beating. We started CPR, doing chest compressions, giving bag-mask ventilations, and then intubating her. We got her heart back, but never did get her to breathe on her own.
As I was doing CPR, I couldn't help but pray. I prayed for the baby, that God would give her life, give her breathe, help her to breathe on her own. I prayed for the mom, that she would somehow handle the probable death of her first baby, that God would comfort her, and would bless her with more kids in the future. I prayed that God would give me wisdom in helping this baby, in helping future moms in her situation, and courage to face this mom and inform her the baby she had carried for 9 months isn't going to live. After leaving the delivery area, I couldn't help but replay the events in my mind of what had transpired in the past few hours. Was there something I should have done differently? Did I miss something I should have seen that would have indicated the baby was going to be as bad off as she was? Should I have taken her to Csection initially? I'll never know what might have been, but I pray God will give me wisdom in the future to make the right decision for each patient I see.