Baby Catching

I'm hanging around the hospital this weekend, hoping to see some action. The hospital in Chinchilla has no public doctors, so the private GPs in town take turn being on-call on weekends. I'm staying at the Nurse's Quarters next to the hospital, so if something happens, I'm right there.

The whole place is quiet today except for a young woman who went into labor and came in this morning. This being her first baby, it could take a while. So I ask the midwife to call me when the baby comes and go off to the cafeteria to do some reading. At about four o'clock in the afternoon, I decide to go around to the birthing suite to check on things.

I walk into the room with the woman screaming at the top of her lungs in pain between breaths of oxygen, with her mother on one side and her husband on the other holding her hands. All on her own, the experienced midwife is getting everything ready while checking on the patient. I want to help, but wait! I know nothing about obstetrics - that rotation is next year. Being the first time watching a natural delivery, I'm completely useless and the best I can do is not get in the way. The midwife checks the patient's cervix. "It's fully dilated," she announces. "Because this is your first one, it can take a while for the baby to come out," she tells the patient. In pain and exhausted, the woman nods.

Of course, Murphy Law applies in situations like this. Five minutes later, "It's coming!" the woman yells and starts to push. The midwife goes over and calms her down. Under her guidance, the delivery goes smoothly and the baby is born. "It's a boy!" declares the midwife. I'm standing there thinking, "where the hell is the doctor?" Fortunately, everything goes smoothly and the midwife has everything in control. She turns to the husband and asks, "do you want to cut the cord?" He looks at the wet clump of screaming and writhing blob in the midwife's hands and shakes his head, probably in shock that THAT is what a new born baby looks like. The midwife expertly clamps off the umbilical cord and gives me the honor of cutting it. She dries the baby, loosely wraps him in a towel and hands him to me. "Can you do an APGAR assessment on him?" she asks.

I gingerly take the crying and grimacing baby into my arms and try to recall the APGAR assessment in my head: Appearance, Pulses, Grimace, something, and...Reflexes? I lay him down under the heatlamp and give him the once over. Pink? Check. Pulses? Check. Grimacing? Check. Gripping reflex? Check. "Is the baby healthy?" his mother asks. "Looking good so far," I answer, still can't remember the last thing to check. The midwife comes over, checks him over, and tells everyone, "He's a perfect ten." At this point, the doctor on call finally arrives. He talks to the family briefly and gives the baby another check. Having congratulated the brand new parents as their extended family stream into the room to see the new baby, I duck outside so as not to intrude during this intimate moment.

As I walk to the cafeteria for dinner, I breathe a sigh of relief at the end of my first baby-catching exercise.