My experience at he hospital is going well. The 2 babies I had written about in my last post, the one with the tongue-tie has yet to have been clipped but I did make his mama a syringe nipple extractor, as there are no breast pumps available. With this tool she has been able to express colostrom and get the baby to the breast a bit more, he still does not suck well but with a nipple shield and spoon-feeding he is becoming more active & awake. His sweet mama is become quite my fan, and has even asked to stay in touch via the internet. She was still at the hospital as of last night (day 4 postpartum), and may be heading home today. I still think the baby should have the frenulum clipped but the doctors seem to feel that it will be fine, they say they don’t do that here. The other primip mama I was concerned about, baby did develop jaundice and need to be treated with billi-lights, but has since gone home.
The labor ward has been pretty quiet since Sunday, we have had a few C-sections, a few born before arrival (BBA), and I have caught 1 and assisted with a vacuum extraction. There was one more fetal demise, for which I was not present, the baby crashed and mama was rushed, as quickly as possible in Vila to have a cesarean, but it was already too late. The mama that had the breech demise came in to have her tubes tied but I was not present. I hope she is coping well with her loss. I ended up working quite a bit with the intern doctor who handled the breech, and it has been hard on me. I am moving on but still feel the loss deeply. I know that I am doing a lot of good here and that it wasn’t really my fault but I still wish I could change it. Yesterday I stopped the midwives from cutting 2 episiotomies, for which I did a little dance of success. The midwife said she finds them easier to repair and I passed on the wisdom that I have been trained about that if you put two pieces of perineum together they will heal. Both women had mild 2nd degree’s that needed very little suturing.
The new hotel is going quite well. I am enjoying having company and the “Baby Doc lounge” is a nice place to prepare meals and socialize with my fellow New Zealand student midwife. Yesterday was lovely but rainy, we went down to the market and had lunch with the locals, and then M and wandered down the water-front with plans of heading to the arts 7 craft market area to do some tourist shopping, but ran into some friends (another intern & the brit from my plane) and didn't make it. We stood about talking for a good hour before wandering down the road to show the brit the yummy sandwich place(for his lunch) and M and myself got ice cream cones. We made tentative plans to rent a car for the 3 of us to head out and explore the island, and parted ways.
Today we had the other volunteer NZ Midwife Christine over for lunch, I made a coconut curry with eggplant and the mystery greens served it over ginger rice. It was great to have time to debrief with an experienced midwife who practices similar to those of us in the US. Then I did some laundry, which with luck will be dry tomorrow, since the rains just don't seem to want to stop for much time though it is supposedly the dry season it continues to be quite wet. Unfortunately it’s not too great for getting out and doing stuff. I will likely head into the hospital soon to see if any mama’s are ready to have babies, if not I‘ll prep supplies & clean.
Tomorrow I plan to meet with some "couch surfers" (online web community of travelers) at a local bar for happy hour. That's it for now.
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