I helped a girl birth who was 15 years old yesterday, she got pregnant accidently took antibiotics while she was on the pill. Her partner is 16 years old. She did a fantastic job. I asked her when I first went into her room about a few things to do with labour and birth, one of them was, "What sort of pain relief do you want for labour?"
Her answer was almost immediate, "Epidural!"
She was 6cm dilated on admission to the delivery suites, so I went on to explain about other forms of pain relief we like to try before epidural. I got her some hotpacks, and she used nitrous oxide which made her pretty giggly in between contractions, not a bad way to go eh? Found it even funnier when she all of a sudden looked up between pushes and said..." well, guess it is a little late to have my epidural now"
It is amazing how well, young, uninformed women go at birthing, they have so little expectation of what things will be like and what is supposed to happen. She got through the whole thing with some nitrous oxide and just some grazes. Her baby came out with his hand over his shoulder waving, a good recipe for nasty tears but grazes were all we had Wooohoooo!
Had a kinda crummy day today in comparison, one of the mothers I was looking after decided she would tell me my job, and how she wanted everything done. Another one decided to go home, had a look at her breast feeding argh is all I can say...we call it breast feeding, that means not just nipples in mouth. Breast feeding is not easy, it is something that is learnt, not inherent as everyone is told. If the baby doesn't get enough breast in its mouth there is no way it can milk the breast properly. It always amazes me what cultural differences there are, many women of Asian decent do not have much contact with their babies for the first days after birth, they bottle feed until their milk comes in (day 3 or 4 or 5), its what they have always done and they are usually quite successful. Anglo saxon women tend to have a lot more trouble, it is not really the norm, something has gone wrong somewhere so that we have lost our ability to breastfeed.
But anyways.. I will stop ranting about boobies for now and sign off I think. Hmmm another boobies post, think I am developing a theme here? *cackles*

posted by BJ @   0 Comments