delivery #3

3rd baby i delivered. happy mother! and baby boy Jonathan

they always say 3rd times a charm and in this circumstance they were right! I had a great delivery my 3rd time around! Its my 2nd week in the labour room and i was monitoring 2 women doing their partographs. We waited with the women probably 2 hours till we began to see some progress. I began to monitor the babies heart rate with the Doppler. A normal heart rate for a baby in the womb is between 110-160 and this baby's was beating at 76. the baby was obviously in distress, so we got the doctor's to come over and monitor her and do the same steps that we took in checking the heart rate only to confirm that the baby was in distress. We began to pray over the mother and baby that its heart would begin to beat faster and it would come out quickly and healthy. It was the mother's first child and she had probably 8 people standing around her treating her more like an object than a person, lets just say she looked a bit terrified. They wanted to do a C-section but figured by the time they took her to the theatre, she would deliver.... which is exactly what happened.

The baby was shy in coming out and she did rip.. but long story short .. the baby came out breathing, a bit blue but for the most part, but quite healthy. After the baby was delivered, everything went incredibly smoothly. She lost hardly any blood and was so happy to have a baby boy. My favorite part of the whole thing was to see the mother's face when we brought the baby back to her after we cleaned him up and checked his vitals. Africans rarely show emotion, but when she saw her baby boy she was glowing and couldn't take her eyes off of him.

The mother usually doesn't know what she will name the baby when she delivers, but Beth and I got the name Jonathan. It also reminds me of all the people i know all around the world with the same name and i take some time to pray for the friends and family that have that name.

The mother and baby are worth being cared, prayed over and advocated for, though some nurses here might disagree. I know God answered our prayers as we prayed over that women and her baby and He is glorified through this new life that came into the world as he took his first breath.