Busy Week at Vila Central Hospital!

Week 3

Miliaria is gone! Once I started using the air conditioning at night it cleared up.

This was a very busy week for the Maternity Ward at Vila Central Hospital. To follow is a few of the highlights of the week. I hope you are enjoying this and let me know if you have any questions or are curious about anything that I have not mentioned.

There were 2 vacuum extractions performed by the Doctor that I observed. One was to assist a mom during 2^nd stage of labor (pushing) because she had severe heart disease. Before the vacuum assist she had an episiotomy. This woman had a severe heart murmur you could easily see by looking at her chest wall. It was very unforgettable to hear and palpate. Her baby was thought to be somewhere between 36 and 39 weeks gestation and she delivered a 2.26 kg girl. The second vacuum extraction was performed on a woman who needed a little extra help and she had a big (3.92 kg) baby boy who had a cleft lip and hard palate. By the way, he did great with breastfeeding despite this anatomical deformity!

I continue to practice my suturing and observing the midwives suture. This week I have had lots of opportunities to strengthen this skill and I am feeling much more confidant suturing.

There were a couple resuscitations this week. One was on a 3kg boy who had AROM (artificial rupture of membranes). AROM is where the bag of waters are broken with a device called an amnihook. There was thick meconium in the bag of waters. His 1-minute, 5-minute and 10-minute Apgar’s were 5/5/9. He received suctioning and blow-by oxygen. Another was a 3.9 kg girl with 1-minute, 5-minute, and 10-minute Apgar’s of 3/6/10 and who was SROM (spontaneous rupture of membranes – bag of waters broke on their own naturally) with thick meconium. She received suctioning and blow-by oxygen. The mommy of this big girl had placental membranes that were slow to deliver and cervical prolapse.

A 24 year old G3P2 (3 pregnancies, 2 viable births) VBAC (vaginal birth after C-section) gave birth to a 3.14 kg girl with Apgar’s 9/10!

I observed another footling breech with a nuchal cord who had an emergency C-section. She had a 2.62 kg boy with Apgar’s 9/10. It was interesting to feel the little toes of this boy during the vaginal exam. I am very familiar feeling the heads of these little babies not little toes!

We had a baby girl who was BBA (baby born on arrival), which means that she had her baby at home. This woman had had her baby at home and her mother brought her in with the placenta still inside the mom and cord attached to baby. We clamped and cut the cord on the truck and wheeled the mom into the delivery suite where we tried to deliver the placenta. Unfortunately after a couple hours the placenta was not coming out. So we arranged for Dr. Robert to manually remove the placenta in the surgical ward. This is a very painful and invasive procedure that I witnessed and that I hope does not happen all that too often. She had been given the strongest analgesics and sedatives the anesthesiologist had. The placenta was completely manually removed and mom and baby are doing great!

Lastly, I had to help a mother a little with the delivery of her 3.4 kg baby girl who had been a little stuck and required me pulling her. It was not a true shoulder dystocia by the way.

For fun, I have been continuing my daily swims. The New Zealand midwife, Elizabeth, and her midwifery student, Angela, arrived. Angela and I went to go swim the swim course and dove into a group of jelly fish. I could not see any jelly fish but they were there. We both had this strange nerve tingling feeling all over our bodies. The sensation went away for both of us after a few hours. I have been scuba diving in the waters around Efate and the ocean environment is beautiful. I have been eating out a couple times to get a sense for the restaurants in the area. I had a wonderful fish dinner with mango chutney at a restaurant called Chill, which is located on the waterfront. It was during sunset and I saw a most magnificent sky. The cruise ship was leaving the port and oh my, this ship is huge! It had a big television screen, which I could clearly see the screen as it sailed away. I continue to enjoy my walks to the hospital whereby all the little children so happily greet me as I walk by.