Midwife Mondays 8: My First Baby “Catch”!!

This week has been a busy week. It was my second week on placement and it was just as much of a baptism of fire as the first! This week has had more firsts, more need for speedy reactions and a few moments of genuine comedy too!

So, this is what I’ve been up to this week (again, the order of events has been muddled up for confidentiality reasons – see disclaimer below for more info)

• Christened into the role of a midwife.
  Yep, christened in the very traditional sense. I was getting ready to weigh a 3 day old baby girl and was holding her up against me, and she peed all down my front. I’m officially a student midwife now! ha!

• “Catching” my first baby!
  Yep, you read that right. I actually delivered a baby! Last week I witnessed my first births, and this week I delivered my first baby. The mother was amazing – she only had gas and air throughout the whole labour and delivered a beautiful baby boy in the pool. Then we got her out of the pool, gave her a quick injection (which was also my first!) and she delivered the placenta. She did so so well and was so brave! I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am to the parents and to my mentor for giving me the opportunity and having the confidence in me to do the “catching” all myself (and for my wonderful mentor, who is now back from her annual leave, being there ready to jump in if I was struggling!). Needless to say, I was high as a kite and I still can’t believe it! We have to do 40 actual “catches” before we can qualify, and I got my number 1 this week – I will never forget that – I actually delivered a baby this week! (Obviously, what I did in this instance is minuscule in comparison to what the mother did, after all, she actually birthed the baby – but for me it was such a milestone to be the one “catching”!)

• First night shift.
  I was expecting to feel terrible and to be counting down the hours, but it felt like I blinked and it was morning and I was being told to go home. It was a fantastic night – I mean, genuinely, we hardly stopped all night but it was amazing! (p.s. would a “Night Shift Survival” post be of interest to you guys?)

• Group Reflection.
  Roughly once every “term” we have a placement site get together to tough base with our tutors, and find out what everyone has been up to. As we are all placed in different departments at the moment it was really lovely to hear all the stories of what everyone has been doing and the things they have been learning – and it was nice to see them all again, it’s been two weeks since I’ve seen most of their faces and the occasional whatsapp message just isn’t enough of these gorgeous ladies to tide me over until we go back into lectures! 🙂

• Setting off a Fire Extinguisher!
  In amongst shifts we also have the final few safety talks etc and in our fire talk, one of us had to “put out” a fire on the manager’s shirt, and that one person was me – I felt like such a rebel!!! Hehe!

• Cutting my first cord!
  Not all babies take their time being born. This week, I went to two BBAs (Born Before Arrivals) at the mothers’ homes. At both of these the baby had arrived before they had managed to get out of the house let alone into the hospital – both babies were absolutely fine so it was just a case of delivering the placenta and cutting the cord. In both of these cases, the dad didn’t want to cut the cord (it can be a little overwhelming when your baby has delivered on the living room floor!) and so I got to cut my first umbilical cord…and then my second!

• Nearly literally catching a baby!
  Just in case my week hadn’t been full of enough adrenaline, A woman came into the hospital this week in an ambulance, and we had literally just got her onto the bed and suddenly she was crowning! We quickly pulled on some gloves and the baby was in her arms within 30 seconds of her arriving in the hospital! When they call it “baby catching” I thought it was a joke – but I nearly did actually “catch” this one!

I had a comment on last week’s post from a lovely lady called Christina, asking about what assignments we are working on at the moment etc. So, in answer to your question, Christina, at the moment, alongside our placement hours we are working on a group assessment presentation which we have to do at the start of January, after the Christmas break, and we also have to do a reflective essay on something we have witnessed on this placement that we can comment on which is due the week before Christmas – so really, it’s not an unmanageable amount of work, it does keep us busy when we add in placement hours, but it is not unmanageable by any means!

If you guys have any questions, do let me know, leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them – I know a lot of the people that are reading these posts are people applying to study, or thinking of applying in the future, so let me know what questions you have!

Image by Echo Grid

To read last week’s “Midwife Mondays” post, click here.