Christmas Eve at the hospital!

I've realized that I never shared with you what my day at the hospital was like on Christmas Eve. When we arrived in the morning we really didn't have much going on at the hospital so I went and helped Terry(the nursing director) wrap all of the gifts for the nurse including the watches that I brought. I then was called out for another delivery, went and helped out with our first normal delievey of my trip and then back to the presents. While wrapping the presents Jake had to give me a mini present wrapping lesson(clearly I'm not good at wrapping presents). When we were done I then went with Jake and Terry to go and hand the presents out. The nurses absolutely loved the watches and other things that they received. It was so great to see their smiles when they opened the watches.

The rest of the day consisted on two more deliveries. We had a 16 year old girl walk in and we could clearly tell she was in labor. By the time we got her up on the table and checked her she was already fully dilated and pushing. She was young and this was her first child and she had a very difficult time pushing the baby out. It was 5 minutes or more by the time we were able to get the baby out. He had the cord wrapped around his neck very tightly and was blue when he came out. They quickly realized he was not breathing and began to work on him. They finally got the baby to began breathing again and he began to get pink again, Praise Jesus! Then we had another lady come in with serve abdominal pain and she was bleeding very heavily. They checked her and realized she was 36 weeks pregnant and she had what is called placenta abruptio. This means that the placenta had torn away from the uterine wall causing lots of bleeding in the uterus. We then went to check the fetal heart tones and they were absent, she had lost the baby. Doctor Dan then wanted her to delivery the baby as soon as possible so Olive started using all the tricks she knew. It amazes me the to watch these women labor. The women here are taught to not really show pain. These women will be having very intense contraction and the only way that you can tell they are in pain is they may curl their toes slightly. It is amazing and make me sad to think of all the epidurals we give in the states and all the screaming and yelling that goes on. This trip is really giving me new perspective on things and I am very grateful for my experiences! The standing birth count is at 6!!