Day in the life of the hospital

Hi guys
Well I survived my first day working in a hospital, and what a day it was!
After an orientation of the entire hospital I worked for 3 hours on labour ward. The labour ward was about the size of 1 birthing room at Kings Eddies or STMH. It had 8 beds, between every second bed was a half wall (so if you were stood up you could see over it but lying down you couldn’t). Each bed was so close that whilst assisting a women to birth on my left I could touch the women to my right. There were no curtains between the beds so each women could see each other giving birth. For this reason & cultural reasons they birth alone without a support person or partner. I did not see anyone have any pain relief and am unsure if they even have any available but will find that out next week I’m sure.

During the 3 hours I was there I assisted with 5 births and tried to teach 1 nurse to stitch (as they have no training but just get on with it!). There were five other nurses there and I think about 10 babies were born in those 3 hours. The hospital has 60-70 births a day! With 4-5 midwives per shift and 1 doctor - I will never complain about staffing levels again in UK or Oz!! We literally went from one birth to another.

Picture this - “I have a hair net on, goggles, a huge white apron, face mask and gloves. It’s 35 degree’s with 85% humidity and I am sweating my ass off. I have sweat dripping down my gloves and when I take one pair off I can’t get the next set on as my hands are dipping wet.” When I finally took it all off I had droplets of water on my name badge and pocket bag I had on under the apron, my clothes were wet through! Think I lost my body weight in fluids that day!

Once the women gave birth they stood up, put on their pants and a sarong and went and sat on a wooden bench to breastfeed their baby. Within 30 minutes of giving birth they are taken to the ward (walked |I must add!) where they share a bed with 3-4 other women. If all is well was well they would probably be discharged home after 6-12 hours.

Thankfully whist I was there all mothers and babies were well. They have an interesting set up as the women stay on the ‘pre-labour ward’ until they are 7cm then they are moved to the labour ward to give birth. They either have natural vaginal births or caesarean’s - they do not do ventouse or forceps births. They do appear to do quite a few caesareans and do classical incision (for my midwifery friends - I have pictures!).

The mothers have to bring in all their own stuff for the birth - to include a syringe, cord clamp, blade (to cut the cord) and a huge role of cotton wool to mop up the mess! Nothing is supplied by the hospital. One women forgot to bring her cord clamp so we improvised with a piece of a plastic glove to tie the cord off! Worked extremely well and very cost effective I’m sureJ may have to bring that in at CMP - LOL.
They also bring in 4-5 ‘kangas’ (or to us sarongs) 2 for the baby and 2 for the mum & 1 to help mop up the mess. All of this in a little hand bag - none of this western world crap of turning up to hospital to give birth with 2 suitcases full of stuff!!

After this I went to the neonatal ward for a short while to see the tiny babies again. I gave them some of the knitted hats and booties which some of you knitted for them. They were so please with the gifts it was lovely to see - so thank you heaps for those of you that knitted stuff. With the children’s gifts and other baby clothes you have all given I have made up little gift bags (as you can see above) We have already given some away but are going to take the rest to the village which we are going to for a week on the 12^th May as they are even more deprived there.

Next week I am teaching 2 days and in the clinical areas for 2 more days so will have more to tell then I’m sure.
Thinking of you all, take care xxx