Baby Boy Blizzard

 

Well the worst happened.

 

In the small hospital I work at , there is a time I dread like no other. A snow storm. A snow storm when the roads are closed and we are shut off from the outside world. When help can not reach us nor can we go for help. This means that the staff that are in the building at it, no call ins. This means that we can not send patients out to larger centres who require medical interventions we can not do.

Thus we are, and what we have on hand is it.

 

It is a fine balance. Extensive training for a medical event that you nay never see? The cost of supplies that may never be used?

 

During this past weeks blizzard. All the roads were shut down, plows were pulled and all was quiet. Until the dispatch phone rang. There was a woman in labour outside of town. The ambulance just couldn't get to another hospital, they barely made it to the patient,  the woman have to come here.

I am the ER nurse and thus she would be my responsibly. I had recently been re-certified in Neonatal Resuscitation, and attend an obstetrical  skills day every couple years. However, the last birth I attended was when I delivered Ever. I had never witnessed labour and delivery nursing care as I had the midwives attend my children's births. The physician I was working with had not done any obstetrical care in years and the other nurse was ruster than I...... and that was our medical team.

 

I am the first to say that a normal vaginal birth in a low risk woman is not a medical event. However, the unexpected can occur, and at that point the training of the team of midwives/ nurses/ physicians who have training comes into play. At this low risk delivery the unexpected could not happen.

 

The woman laboured without pain medical as we could not take the risk of any complications related. She laboured as the winds blew and snow kept on falling down. I, along the the physician had been reading topics obstetrical  all night in preparation About five in the morning she was getting tired. She wasn't progressing. I was getting worried. So I got her up 'to use the commode'. Really I just wanted her to start contracting while standing and let gravity to do some work. Within a minute, she yelled the baby was coming. My ungloved hand reached down and felt head and I screamed for help. The babe was born a few pushes later, with an  immeaditite cry, and honestly I do not know who was more overjoyed the parents or I.