OB Lesson 1

Last night I learned a very useful lesson for OB nights on call. That is, that at the moment you think nothing is happening, and it just might be safe to duck out for a moment and not have things go awry when you are gone, the opposite will always happen. There will be emergency C-sections, there will be fetal distress, there will be pre-eclampsia.

But as annoying as that can be on a long night on call, when you live just far enough away to make it not worth trying to go home, and as disappointing as it is to arrive late for a delivery or a surgery, this phenomenon can also be used to my advantage. Last night my attending and I were lounging around at the hospital, following a pregnant patient who was in labor and had been significantly dilated for an hour or two, but the fetus still was at a high station and didn't seem to show signs of descending any time soon. So, the two of us figured it would still be an hour or so before she delivered.

Since I knew I had class the next day and no shortage of reading to do, I wasn't very enthused about sitting around for another hour waiting. I can never get any quality studying done in the hospital. Then I thought, what could make this go faster? Then of course it hit me. This was a favorite patient of mine, and I would be extremely sorry to miss her delivery. So I reasoned that if I left the ward for a moment and went down to the doctor's lounge to get a much-needed cup of coffee, that would naturally be when she would shoot that baby out just in time for me to miss it!

A plan was born. I had to execute it skillfully though, because I only wanted to tempt fate, and I had to make sure I would get away with it. It wouldn't be easy - the nurses have a knack for predicting when their patient is about to deliver, but they never can seem to give more than about 2 minutes notice. My attending would call me after the nurse called her, but that would lose precious seconds. Then I would have to quickly gown and glove up - not a quick task for a newbie like me. That would lose a minute at least. It could be tight, but I thought I could make it.

So I headed downstairs toward the lounge, with some fire under my feet. And, like clockwork, the second I put my styrofoam cup under the capuccino dispenser, my phone rang. I was actually shocked that it had worked so flawlessly ~ by leaving for two minutes I had cut an hour off of my patient's labor time! So I left my cup sitting in the machine with the coffee still flowing, raced upstairs, threw on my steral garb, and made it back to the patient's room just in time for the delivery. I caught the baby, delivered the placenta, and sewed up a laceration myself.

I've never felt so smooth. All without a hitch. I got to go home, and I wasn't called again that night. Ahhh, it is sweet when things work out.