Our last day in St. Anthony

We welcomed four more babies into this world today. Again, the DR was all ours, no other school was on the morning shift. Three patients were already in the room when we got there, with students from the University of San Carlos (from the night shift) monitoring the progress of their labor. None of them were in the active phase yet. So they had to endorse the patients to us. I felt sorry for them because they had not even a single case.

It was around 10 when one of the patients showed signs of true labor, but it was not actually until 2PM, when our shift ended, that she delivered her baby. And what a difficult labor it was for her! She laid on the table for more than an hour and tried very, very hard, despite the doctors', nurses' and institute worker's (yes, an IW did also help) occasional comments that she's not trying hard enough, to push her baby out. The doctor already episiotomized her and set the IV fluid to fast drip and still nothing happened. We could already see the baby's hair so it was so frustrating for all of us. One of the doctors eventually used forceps to hasten the baby's expulsion.

The second patient had to be referred to another hospital because there was no progress to her labor and she was already eclamptic (her blood pressure was persistently high). There was no progress to the third patient either, although it was already her third pregnancy.

At around noon two patients arrived with active labor. Their delivery was relatively quicker and easier.

I realized nga lisud jud diay kaayo ang manganak... grabe ka-torture. Wala pay labot diha ang 9 months nga pagsabak sa bata. Maybe that's the reason why our mothers can sometimes be so protective of us, to the point of being "over-acting" or paranoid, because they know fully well how precious we are.

We all finished at around four. We were exhausted because we missed lunch. Richard and I went straight to the hospital canteen while the rest of us went on ahead.

Next week we will be continuing our discussion on the hematologic disorders and we will be reporting finally on the drugs used in the autonomic nervous system. *Gulp*