you know you’re a med student when you request pictures of your own cesarian.no reblogs, please.

we ended up doing a waist block cesarian section after 79 hours of labor. My waters had ruptured on Sunday, and at that point they were clear. Fetal heart tones were good, and monitored every 15-20 minutes throughout the labor. By early tuesday night, Roland’s head was palpable within 2 inches of the vaginal introitus, and my cervix was totally dilated, effaced, and pushing. Then, something happened that I didn’t know Couldhappen, and the kid backed up. By 0400 wednesday, I couldn’t feel his skull anymore, my cervix has closed to 9 cm, and pushing was intermittent. 

Since I hadn’t eaten or slept in 3 days, I decided it was time to transfer. My midwife accompanied me to a hospital 7 minutes away, where I was admitted and immediately given an epidural. That stuff is the bomb.My legs felt like the ocean. A warm, tingly ocean. At that point, on internal examination meconium was found. We started low dose pitocin, and then increased pitocin for the next 6 hours. Despite the 3 days of natural labor and the synthetic hormones, labor began to slow down. My CBC came back with elevated white counts, Roland’s heartbeat started to lose variability, and then the hospital midwife and ob/gyn came to have what they clearly labeled in their minds The Discussion. They were pleasantly surprised to find that I was about to beat them to the point and wondered aloud if it was time to cut this baby out. When they laid out all of the reasons that they wanted to, I wondered why they waited so long. I’m all about natural childbirth, and I had a wonderful 3 days getting this baby as close as I could to the world. Still, I’d rather have a healthy kid, healthy me.

Half an hour later, we were in the OR. My husband almost didn’t get his silly beard hat on fast enough to take pictures of our little angel getting lifted out. He was aspirated for the meconium, and soon enough he was on my chest, being totally worth every single moment of this wretched pregnancy and labor of love. He took to breast within the first half an hour, and is pretty much a champion eater.

I feel like a million dollars (albeit with a seam in the middle) and we were so blessed to have the experience that we did. I’m still working on the narrative story of the whole experience over on the baby side, but I wanted to share the medical side of a wonderful labor, transfer, and intervention.

There’s a big difference between learning about the stages of labor, therefore “understanding them”  and sitting through a contraction while mumbling curse words, trying to breath, and throwing up in the bathtub.

In other news, I didn’t go to school today.

24 hours in. 100% effaced. ??? dilated, but still not contracting enough to go to the center again yet. Just enough to, you know, not sleep.

Use of the procedure increased more than 50 percent between 1996 and 2007, a HealthGrades study found, and in the Golden State, a recent California Watch investigation found that “women are at least 17 percent more likely to have a cesarean section at a for-profit hospital than at one that operates as a non-profit. A surgical birth can bring in twice the revenue of a vaginal delivery.” As a fiscal matter, this is problematic: we’re spending a lot more on childbirth than is necessary at a time when health care inflation is bringing us closer to fiscal ruin.

Were health outcomes improving, the extra expenditure would be worthwhile. But needless cesarean sections are actually harming women and babies alike

Oh, I have so much to say on the state of maternity care in the U.S. of A, but this is a good step in the right direction with clear, concise points that my extremely biased self didn’t write.

School is that thing I do in between naps, these days.

That 3rd trimester exhaustion is no joke, and the way it mixes with the manic cleaning/nesting session is not fun. I’m glad I’m on reduced classes this quarter, as hard as it was to admit that I needed to take a lighter load.

Anyways, in the last week I’ve basically finished midterms- just clinical/ physical diagnosis lab left- and I’ve completed the last of my observation/integration shifts. I also managed to stay on top of the paperwork, so all of that is filed with all of the appropriate offices and copies for my records were made.

Pro-Tip: Always, always make copies of paperwork that documents the amount of hours you’ve spent working somewhere. Whether it’s just to compare the finished product with your paycheck, or to be able to prove that you really have completed all 18 shifts, it’s worth your while. Computer systems go down and things get jumbled in the interoffice filing system all the time. Proof= good.

I’ve also contacted all of my teachers about taking their exams early, and set up time with the Dean and the A/V technology guy to go over logistics for birth and bringing the baby to school. Obviously, having a baby does count as an excused absence, and I can take 2 weeks afterwards off. More than 2 weeks, and they tell you to just take a term off because it’s impossible to catch up. He should be showing up pre-spring break, which is great timing. One of my weeks will be a normal week off, for sure, and then I’m pretty sure the first week of spring term will be easy to miss. Those finals though…They have a set time that they have to be done in.

Pro- Tip: If you can study ahead, do it. Taking things early is always easier than trying to catch back up.

Right now I’ve asked to take my CPD lab final a week early, and attend my last Lab dx Lab class a week early. Those are my two hardest things to make up, since they’re both hands on and I’ll need a partner for both classes. Moreover, for CPD lab, I’ll need a partner who isn’t interested in taking the final early because many of the exams are impossible to perform on me at this time. I’m just not up for an abdominal exam. All of my organs are elsewhere anyways. On top of that, I’ll be able to take two lecture class finals during the study week. It’s a little more pressure on me, but early is so much better than later. I need to hear back from one more teacher, but if I can take his final early I’ll be done with all of my finals during lab finals week. Most babies wait a whole extra week after their due dates, especially first babies.

Pro-tip: As long as you’re doing your best, things will work out one way or another. I’d be freaking out about this whole finals-baby thing a lot more if my mom hadn’t constantly quoted at me “This too, shall pass.” There’s a time for everything, and while I like it when events happen on my own personal time plan, I know that things will work out no matter when they happen.

Stores are not carrying Cadbury eggs. Not a single one of the three stores I went to. Highly disappointing.

• be a more effective napper
• lose some weight in march.
• get honors in pathology this quarter.
• work on empathy and compassion.

wordsthatididntsay asked: .9"? Weak sauce. I'd expect better from that geographical area. Also, YOU HAVE AN OUTIE BELLY BUTTON NOW. Once your belly button protrudes during pregnancy, will it ever go back in? Also, is it true that people who have outies from birth got that way due to the way the umbilical cord was cut?

Pretty typical amount of rain, actually. Lots of places get more rain than us, they just don’t get it spread out over 6 months or so. Viva la perpetual damp!

My belly button should go back to innie position right after birth, as the stretch level of abdominal muscles goes down without the 8 lbs of baby, 4 lbs of amniotic fluid, ect. Belly buttons are a scar, and so they’re basically elastin and fibrin constructs. Both of those substances don’t really like being bent out of shape, and tend to return to initial forms.

As for innie vs outie- There are so many stories out there! Standard procedure for clamping and tying off umbilical cords doesn’t leave any room for manipulation or difference. Once it’s tied off, the body goes about making its first scar. It’s theorized that innies are genetically preferable, since only 10% of belly buttons are outies- making them possibly a mutation or a recessive trait. Some also theorize that it’s due to a weak spot in the linea alba, where the GI has pressed up into the concavity that usually contains the belly button, and so forces the scar to be an outie.

My personal favorite is the old wives tale that outies happen when parents forget to tape a coin over the developing umbilicus scar.

As far as sources, I used “the developing human: clinically oriented embryology”, wikipedia, my immunology and pathology notes for the real theories, and snopes for the old wives tale explanation

but I need to stay up for one and a half more hours.
Talk to me!*

*I can’t give medical advice, as I have no license yet.**
** Pretty much anything else is fair game.