Delivery #20

My first delivery in Bangladesh! I found it to be both rewarding and exciting to do a delivery here in this land that is so foreign and unknown to me..in some ways I feel like im having double culture shock.. I got so used to the ways of Africans that now I have to get used to the ways of another people it almost in some ways is quite exhausting..but fascinating at the same time.

It was my first day in the hospital here in the Desh.. we actually live within the compound of the hospital. I have afternoon shifts from 1-7pm and nothing exciting had happened all day. The people here are quite interested in us white people.. mostly because the area we are probably the only white people they have ever seen.. I know this because it’s almost like they don’t know how to treat us..we go to their internet café (which is one sad little computer) and when its time to pay the owner tells me I don’t need to pay..because friends don’t make friends pay.. im like I just met you when I came to use your internet.. they are a sweet people that want you to be their best friend and if they could they would adopt us to be apart of their family.

Anyways.. I had a slow day working at the hospital and it was 5 minutes till my shift was over when one of the nurses ran up to me calling and telling me there was a delivery.. I was so in shock that there was actually a delivery bc I had been sitting there for 6 hours waiting and the moment had finally come! I went into the delivery room and saw that she was all ready to deliver.. I realized as soon as I walked into the delivery room how differently they do things here from Tanzania.

They are so much cleaner when preparing the woman for delivery.. give her an enema which cleans her out and then we wait for the baby to come..because there are so few deliveries each week all of the nurses in training will watch the deliveries on their shift, so I had about 6 nurses all crowded around watching me do the delivery 2 assisting me with it. I was getting a bit claustrophobic and asked them if it was okay if I do the delivery. I thought it was already clear that I was doing the delivery, but I guess not because they were pushing their hands over mine. They backed off a bit when I asked which helped the delivery go a bit more smoothly. It took 7 pushes for the head to deliver, then the head came out and the body shot out after it and was glad I had a firm hold on the baby.. I placed it on the mothers stomach and it began to breathe.
They give no medication to assist with delivery of the afterbirth, so it usually takes a bit longer for the placenta to come out.. I had been waiting 20 minutes for it to come and it hadn’t detached fully from the uteran wall, so I went to do a set of vitals on the mom while I waited. As I was removing my gloves and washing my hands I turned around to see the afterbirth coming out and one of the nurses who had no gloves on had it in her hands! I had never seen that before because we always wear gloves.

The mother was doing great as well as the baby boy. We got the name Matthias for him which means gift of God. He was super cute and I loved taking pics of his different face expressions. Here is his verse… Psalm 118:21 “I will praise you, for you have heard me and have become my salvation.”