C-Sections and Selfies

My friend and I were working with a mama who had started feeling labor pains 4 days prior. Her first baby was delivered via C-section and when this labor stalled, she asked for another. If only it worked that way... It took hours for the doctor to even assess her and then even more time before the OR staff came for her. 

As usual, she was asked to stand and change into the army-green OR gown and answer a number of questions before walking herself down to the operating ward. I was holding her IV and catheter bags and she kept looking at me and saying, "Let's go!" and walking away in the general direction of the OR. She was, however, tethered by her lines and I had to remind her several times that we couldn't leave until we had permission. She was so frustrated and to make things more difficult, she continued to contract while waiting for the tech to prepare the paperwork. She also refused to sit down. I'm sure this would have seemed like a step backwards and a move away from being done with the whole nasty business that her labor had seemed to become.

When the tech was finally ready to go, I walked a step ahead to keep her from getting tangled in her lines. My friend came third with the OR tech following last. When we reached the door into the OR, my friend and I stopped and I tried to hand the bags off to the tech but the mama said, "I want them to come with me!" I looked at the tech and then at my friend (who's face said that she was doing everything to hold back a squeal). The tech said he'd ask and disappeared. In the meantime, the mama was passed off to another staff member who, without missing a beat, muttered, "You can come."

We stepped into a small room with a tall cabinet of powder-blue surgical clothes. We picked out something that looked like it would fit and then draped a sheet over ourselves - I suppose to keep germs from jumping, willy-nilly onto random surfaces as we walked by. Last but not least, we slipped off our shoes before leaving the room and then walked the full length of the OR to the women's dressing room at the other end. I was too excited to think about what I was stepping in with my bare feet or the fact that they say the pores on your feet are bigger than any others on your body. 

We changed into our scrub dresses (yes, you heard right), tied up our hair in army-green bandannas and borrowed two pairs of bumblebee-yellow galoshes. When I slipped my foot in the first boot, I felt something and jerked my foot back. Why the owner was storing dirty plastic bags in her boots is a mystery.  *shudder* 

We donned our masks and followed the nurse into the operating theater. Our mama was being prepped and given an epidural. Normally, they like to completely sedate the patients for c-sections but the baby was showing more and more signs of distress so they decided it wasn't worth the extra time. 

Once mama was prepped and ready, the staff let my friend and me stand at the foot of the bed. It was the perfect vantage point and there was nothing to obstruct our view. The doctor made one smooth incision and then he and the scrub tech pulled, leaning back to utilize their body weight, to stretch the opening to make room for a baby. 

It was barely 15 minutes and he pulled out a very, very large baby girl! She was partially engaged in the pelvis and so he had to pull her back up towards the mama's chest and then out through the incision. Had the baby been further down, a c-section couldn't have been possible and the labor ward staff would've tried using the vacuum extractor. As much of a bummer as a c-section is, I wouldn't wish vacuum extraction on my worst enemy! I was thankful when I heard our big girl start wailing. She was carried off to be given a once-over by the nursery staff.

Lucky for us, there was a med student watching too and he was happy to answer all of my questions as I watched in complete awe. When the doctor was ready to stitch the mama up, he pushed on her abdomen until her uterus popped out and was sitting on top of her belly for easy access. Yes. It reminded me of being 8 years old and learning about homesteaders using pig bladders as balloons and 19th century water bottles... 

The doctor was amazingly fast and had mama stitched up in a short time. We waved our goodbyes, thanked everyone profusely and slipped out. After taking a number of fun pictures of us in our super awesome outfits, we reversed the process, ending with retrieving our shoes from the first room and heading back to the ward. It felt like coming back from the land of Narnia and trying to figure out why no one has been wondering where we've been. 

"But we've been gone for hours!"

It was really only about an hour and half but it was so neat to be allowed a peek into the mysterious interior of the OR. I've watched plenty of women disappear behind the doors and have always wondered what happened back there. Now I know. I've worked in some beautiful, 1st-world operating rooms and I was worried about what I'd find here. I was grateful to see the theater, relatively clean and to the best of my knowledge, adequate for the procedure. 

At the end of the day, my friend and I visited our mama and her new baby in the post-natal ward. Both looked great and after congratulations and some newborn snuggles, we headed home for the day.