Apologies for the lateness in posting this – I have spent the past 3 days trying to fight the most horrendous bug and last night it all got too much and I ended up at an out-of-hours clinic so couldn’t write it yesterday. Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself, but I’m sure I’ll survive!
So, I’m writing this from my sick bed – yes, that’s right, I’ve actually had to call in and miss a shift today – how rubbish is that?! Hopefully this bug will (excuse my language!) bugger off, and I’ll be able to do the rest of my shifts this week – fingers crossed!
Anyway, before this horrid bug decided to rear it’s ugly head, I still managed to have a pretty darn good week last week – so here goes! (As always the order of events has been changed for confidentiality reasons!)
Skills lab
We had another skills session this week, focussing on catheterisation. Bladder care is a huge part of caring for a labouring woman – it is so important for a woman to keep passing urine throughout labour and so catheterisation is a really important skill for a midwife to have. Most of us have done catheterisation a few times in practice already so this session was mostly to teach us the proper theory behind it all – and the one thing I have to say is that catheterisation on a plastic mannequin is so so much harder than on a real woman! ha!
I do like these skills days when they come in the middle of placement – sometimes it does feel like we are doing too much, and it’s just that one extra thing to squeeze in, but it’s so lovely to see my cohort in those 6 weeks that we are away! Otherwise I just wouldn’t see most of my classmates until the end of placement! It’s a long time to not see those faces for!
Baby Catch Number 10!
This week, I caught my 10th baby! I still can’t quite get my head around that! 10 babies that I have helped into the world!
Before I get any negative comments, I am fully aware that the mothers are the ones doing the real work when it comes to delivering a baby, but to get to 10 babies that I have officially “caught” is a pretty big deal for me, and so I feel like my little happy dance is totally and completely justified (and also completely metaphorical as a happy dance wouldn’t be possible for me right now in my poorly person state!)
It was a really lovely delivery too – a lovely water birth, where the mother simply seemed to breathe her baby boy out. It was beautiful! She already had a daughter at home, and everything went so smoothly she was home within a matter of hours to introduce her daughter to her new baby brother! I love when you get the chance to get to know the women properly throughout their labour – learn a bit of their backstory etc – it makes it even more special to part of this day in their lives. 🙂
Night Shift to Day Shift
This week I also experienced a first by having a night shift, finishing in the morning and then coming in for a day shift the following morning. I’ve had long shifts before, or days where I’ve been unable to sleep before a night shift and I’ve been awake for AGES, but that day shift, following a night shift was hard! I felt like my body clock didn’t know which way was up (plus, I was probably fighting the start of this bug which won’t have helped at all!)
Anyone who works shift work regularly and has any tips for getting your head around this body clock mess up, please do let me know in the comments below!
Getting lost in the hospital
This week, on a particularly quiet bit of my shift, myself and my mentor were asked to go and visit a lady on another ward in the hospital, who was being treated for another condition but just happened to be pregnant. She needed a midwife visit every 24-48 hours just to check on her baby, so we headed off with our kit in hand to go and visit her…..and got really really lost! Turns out, neither of us know the hospital very well at all! It should have taken us about 15/20 minutes and we were gone nearly an hour! It’s like a city – it’s absolutely vast!
We did eventually find her, and all was absolutely fine!
Well, I’ve never had a “Midwife Mondays” post that has taken me so long to write – my head hurts after about 10 minutes looking at the screen so I’ve had to write this in bits throughout the day, between naps…..I tell you something, I’ll be pleased when this bug has gone….I’m so unimpressed with it already!
Image by freestocks.org
To read last week’s “Midwife Mondays” post, click here
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