Since I have been sharing my success stories, let me share some failures as well.... Especially one story that I'll never forget...
One lady in labor came to the hospital... As is the case with most cases that come from the villages, she had never been to a hospital before and did not even have any concept of antenatal care. This was her second child, the first being a home delivery. She came purely because all attempts in the village had failed. The attempts being... 100 vaginal examinations and manipulations, labour augmenting drugs used indiscreetly, hot water and oil fomentation to 'smoothen' the birth canal and god knows what else.
Thus, when she came... She was 6 days pains and leaking with a swollen vulva and fetal heart non recordable... I told them to go elsewhere for an emergency cesarean. (My boss was not around at the time which meant that post delivery I would have to tend to the mother lying open in the operating table and the baby that was just born.) But they begged and pleaded to try vaginally as this was the only hospital they knew of. So I did.
Pitocin... Episiotomy.... Forceps.... But the baby would just not deliver....
Finally... I gave up....
Asked them to take elsewhere...
And she went...
With a cut vagina.... And a baby still inside... She walked out....
PS - The staff told me that earlier they used to resort to destructive procedures like craniotomy (cutting a hole in the fetal skull) to get the fetus out as most babies died in utero much before reaching the hospital.
PPS- I have no news of that mother. I pray both of them lived.
One lady in labor came to the hospital... As is the case with most cases that come from the villages, she had never been to a hospital before and did not even have any concept of antenatal care. This was her second child, the first being a home delivery. She came purely because all attempts in the village had failed. The attempts being... 100 vaginal examinations and manipulations, labour augmenting drugs used indiscreetly, hot water and oil fomentation to 'smoothen' the birth canal and god knows what else.
Thus, when she came... She was 6 days pains and leaking with a swollen vulva and fetal heart non recordable... I told them to go elsewhere for an emergency cesarean. (My boss was not around at the time which meant that post delivery I would have to tend to the mother lying open in the operating table and the baby that was just born.) But they begged and pleaded to try vaginally as this was the only hospital they knew of. So I did.
Pitocin... Episiotomy.... Forceps.... But the baby would just not deliver....
Finally... I gave up....
Asked them to take elsewhere...
And she went...
With a cut vagina.... And a baby still inside... She walked out....
PS - The staff told me that earlier they used to resort to destructive procedures like craniotomy (cutting a hole in the fetal skull) to get the fetus out as most babies died in utero much before reaching the hospital.
PPS- I have no news of that mother. I pray both of them lived.
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