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Diaries of a nurse: The Labor Room pt.2


The gift of life is truly an out of this world experience. As I was running around the hospital from the operation theatre to the gynecology and obstetrics section to make sure the patient's blood pressure was stable for her surgery, I ran to double check a few points with the doctor and there was a birth, not any birth but twins! August 2nd, 2018 my third birth to attend and I was filled with butterflies. Twins! I took the papers from the doctor to give the patient's husband to run the labs and to give the BP patient her medications. In that moment I learned that nothing is faster than a second in a hospital; everything happens in the blink of an eye. I ran back to the labor room and a beautiful little girl was on her way out to this world, head first prepared to get down to business. The umbilical cord was cut and she was placed on the heater, disturbed by the excessive lighting and crying for dear life. Just a few feet away her mother was awaiting her second baby to join us. As I stood there holding the cloth in my hand to carry my very first baby something odd happened, 18 minutes after number one, at exactly 12:18 pm a baby's bottom appeared rather than the head and as the doctor tugged the baby, a little boy appeared. The baby was startlingly white, his lips were purple, and he wasn't crying, my heart skipped a beat, the very first baby I would hold was going to be a corpse. The doctors rushed the baby to his sister and started CPR, all the while his sister sat quietly like a mixture of serenity and fear; an agonizing view. The doctor told me to go call for a doctor from the neonatal section. As soon as I arrived, I screamed for help and no one could hear me. I got closer to the door and the nurse yelled at me stating that I should not be in there and I am explaining how urgently I needed a doctor and that there was a baby who would die any moment now. She told me to calm down and I wanted to punch her in the face; a few seconds later the doctor appeared and followed me back to where the baby was. Once we arrived and thank God the CPR worked! He was slowly pinking and crying. I never believed crying would be so calming until I heard a newborn's cry; the gift of life. The cries sounding like Chopin's beautiful piece "Nocturne"; so beautiful and so harmonious. 

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