It’s been another busy couple of weeks and, as seems to happen when life takes over, I’ve not got round to posting my midwife posts – sorry! Catching up now!
Week 144 has been a busy one – and now sitting down at the end of it, I was completely wiped out. After what seemed like an age, I was back in the hospital. The last time I was in the hospital was my week on the birth centre at the end of April and it felt like an absolute age ago!
I started the week doing more of my safeguarding work – trying to pull it all together and adding comments to the forum (its an online module and so we’ve got to comment on each others work and use the comments we receive to build on the work we have done). After two days sitting at my desk it was time to get into the hospital again.
I was working on the close observation unit – essentially intensive care for maternity. I’d never been placed there before and so it was certainly a bit of a learning curve.
I had two long day shifts, and they were above anything else, remarkably interesting. The cases that go to close observation are the women who have had significant blood loss, signs of sepsis, or significant problems at delivery.
One of the cases, who I spent the majority of my time with was a woman who had undergone a general anaesthetic for placenta percreta – where the placenta had implanted through the wall of the uterus, into the abdomen and into her bladder.
She had lost over 9 litres of blood during her surgery and had received several units of blood transfusion and spent a few days in the main hospital ITU. Caring for her; ensuring all her drugs were given on time, helping her out of bed for the first time and even sorting a visit for her to go and see her baby for the first time on the neonatal unit was both challenging and incredibly rewarding – and enabled me to get to know this particular woman very well and at a very vulnerable time her life; its the type care where it really felt like I could make a difference. A very special feeling indeed and made the work absolutely fly by.
We had a big family cricket match that weekend; an annual thing, so I started my Friday making a big cake to take along and then when M got home from work we hopped into the car and headed down to Bristol for the evening. We stayed with my parents, and M’s parents joined us there for the night before we all drove down to Devon in time for the match on Saturday.
My dad, M and M’s dad were all playing and thankfully the sun stayed out long enough for them to get a good match in – which we won, again! Yay!
Image by virginia lackinger
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