Twins and a Prolapsed Cord

This weekend at the hospital was nuts.  There were  naked women on the dirty floor yelling, "The baby is coming!"  There were not enough beds for them all, and there were more pukers than usual.

The operating theatre was not "in service" due to the air conditioner being broken.  I am not sure why the air-con is necessary to operate, but apparently it is.  The vacuum extractor was also broken. 

So into this environment, a lady named Malley (not her real name) walked in.  Her belly was HUGE (in an adorable way) and she had not had prenatal care.  She walked around until a baby started to fall out bum first. A little girl was born breech.  Then another baby started to make his way into the room head first.  Unfortunately his umbilical cord led the way.  So now the midwives were dealing with a prolapsed cord.

The midwives flipped her over to a head down/ on her knees position and tried to push the cord back up into the mom.  They also pushed the head up and then flipped her back to her back and applied suprapubic pressure in an upward direction to hold the head up off the chord while trying to fix the vacuum extractor.  They couldn't get it to work and they called the doctor.  Meanwhile there was still a heartbeat.  I was holding Malley's hand, praying with her and comforting her.  She asked me to sing a hymn while we waited.  Singing is not my gift, but we sang anyway.

The doctor arrived and without the option of C section or the vacuum, he proceeded to just have her try to deliver the baby quickly.  Two contractions later the head was in the birth canal and the chord had stopped pulsating.  Two more contractions.  We all started to anticipate a dead baby.  I prayed and prayed.  A very grey and limp 5lb baby emerged.  After some stimulation though he pinked up and cried.  I checked on him a lot throughout the rest of the day.  He was a champion nurser and very alert little guy.  I'm so thankful that he is okay.

Four Fun Births

It seems like death and life are so closely intertwined here.  Three times yesterday, I saw babies enter the world to the eerie tune of the "death wail" just outside the window where these women were giving birth..  As people left this earth in one room, new ones entered in the labor and delivery ward.

I spent all day at the local hospital as a volunteer doula.  I walked in on the birth of twin baby girls.  They were about 6lbs each and born vaginally.  It was awesome.  After the babies, the mom hemorrhaged and was quite weak afterwards.   I got to be her extra hands for the first couple of hours, cleaning little meconium bottoms and holding the babies while mom washed up.

Another little baby was named after me. I spent a lot of time with this mom, from the time she was 2 centimetres until after her baby was born.  At one point, she had not made much progress for a few hours and the baby was very high up and posterior.  We worked on movements and positions she could do to help with this and it was so exciting seeing that within a few hours her baby had turned over and was engaged.  Little Kimberly was born up to her chest before I could get anyone to come help.

Then there was the girl who walked in just a half hour before I left.  She came in with a friend, who promptly got kicked out (hospital rules).  After a few minutes everyone suspected that this first time mom just might be pretty close to delivering.  Sure enough, ten minutes after she arrived she was completely dilated and ready to push.  I got to hold her hand and talk her through what was happening and then watch her as she giggled in delight over her precious new baby boy on her chest.  

It is such an blessing to be able to be with these bright smiling, beautiful, and strong ladies as they become mothers.  I love being able to be kindness and love to them.  It is just plain old fun.

Lost in the Jungle

Have you ever wondered what you would do if you were really lost in the wilderness?

One night, about two years ago, I discovered what I would do….

"Hka hka hka" I could hear the familiar cough in place of a knock outside my door. I went outside to investigate.

There was a middle aged woman with one blind eye, two teenage girls, and two young men at my door. I hadn't seen any of them before. They had come to get my friend and I.  A woman with twelve previous children had given birth to twin girls the night before. Both babies were fine, but the woman was bleeding a lot, had a retained placenta, and they feared for her life. They wanted us to come and help.

It was a four hour hike to where she was in her banana leaf garden shelter. I got what I might need and we all started out. It was 4pm and our husbands weren't going to expect us back until the following day.

It is a treacherous hike. It seemed to be either straight up or straight down most of the time. Now it is the custom here, to yodel messages back and forth between the mountains.  About 2 hours into our hike we heard yodeling from the mountains across from us. The woman had died.

We told them to go on ahead, as it was their mother and sister who had died. I had a nine month old baby and wanted to get back.

Our guides would have led us back…but we figured we could find our way back through the jungle. (Don’t ask me why two California girls thought that) So after about a half hour on our own, we could not find the trail. We went up…all we could find was thick bush.  We went down and it was the same. So here’s what we did.

1. Sit down

2. Pray

3. Yell/scream really really loud.

4. Shine our flashlights to the mountain villages across the valley.

What did we yell? Well, we perfected our yodel (The way they yell from village to village). We yelled “the white ladies are stuck in the bush!” in 5 different languages. (Spanish and French were just to mix it up for our sakes) We figured as long as we were making noise, it could attract help.

We yelled once or twice that we didn’t have any toilet paper so someone really needed to help us.

Eventually (a couple of hours later) two young men from the next mountain range over (yes we had been that obnoxious) came to get us and lead us home.

So we were home before 1am and slept safely in our own beds.

If this woman had a skilled birth attendant with her, she would still be alive today. One of the twins died a week later.