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Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

Horrible Birth for Very Young Woman

I need to share this really bad birth with you all, please be aware this gets real ugly....

Ok, 15yo client calls me 5am Thursday morning, having contx 5-7 min apart but doing fine, suggest she try to rest and lets talk in a hour. 6am contx still about 5 min apart, suggest she eat a light breakfast and lets talk again. 7am ate some toast and juice contx about 5 min apart getting a bit more painful, she is going to take a walk and a hot bath and talk to me later. 9:45 took walk and bath and now contx are 3-4 min apart and very painful so off to hosp for VE to determine progress. 10:30am nurse does VE, 1.5 cm, 70% etc. etc..So she decides to go home for awhile and she if she can get the contx to either stop so she can rest or kick in to something "real". Call me at 8pm, contx very very painful and going abck to hosp, pretty sure she is in active labor. WRONG! still 1.5cm 70% etc. etc. Decides to spend night in hosp and get some morphine to stop contx so she can rest and then are going to start Pit at 5am (don't want this baby getting too big- ARGH!) So I spend a relatively sleepless night at hosp with my client, her contx are pretty strong and regular at 3-4 min apart but she is sooo tired (poor thing :( ) she just wants to rest. So 5am they start Pit and right away her contx are real strong and she is doing a lot of good breathing and trying real hard to relax. Sidenote: while we have been there I swear she has already had 5 different nurses and they all ask the same stupid intake questions over and over, Hello? maybe you should read her chart BEFORE you come in!!! Anyway, doc shows up at 9am, VE shows 2cm 80% -1 station, does AROM and ok's epidural. So after 3 tries the epidural is in place and client is sleeping so I go home and sleep for about 3 hours and head back to hosp around 2:30pm. 3pm, VE by nurse, 3-4cm. Client just laying in bed waiting for things to happen. Pit is up to max now, 6pm VE 4cm, 90% -1 station, I am beginning to think this is going to rollercoaster into a FTP situation if labor doesn't get going. So I convince her to at least roll onto her side and change position every 1/2 hour. 7pm nurse checks temp, 103.4, I start rubbing her down with ice water and they bring in fan to help cool her down, lovely nurse says that she has some kind of infection in her body that she has probably given to her baby. Gee, couldn't be from the AROM and vag exams could it, not to mention the internal monitor or catheter?!?!? JERKS!!

Then nurse comes in and starts to hook something up to her IV and I ask what is she doing and she glares at me and says that because my client has a fever they have to give some antibiotics, so I remind nurse that client is allergic to Penicillin. Well guess what she was just about to pump into her??!! That's right, penicillin. Anyway, about 9pm doc shows up and does VE and client just has a small anterior lip so she says she will give her about 20 minutes to let the lip resolve itself and then she can start pushing. 1 HOUR later, doc shows up telling us about this weird TV show she has been watching, Gimme a break!!

Anyway ( and this is where things get ugly) after 2 hours of pushing and no progress the doc decides to try a vacuum extractor. But the baby is so high up that she practically has to shove the whole extractor into my clients vaginal canal to connect with baby's head!! And they have already turned off the epidural in hopes that if she can feel her contx she can push better. So she can feel all of this!! She is screaming and crying and the doc is tearing her perineum with the vacuum extractor and her entire hand up there!! So after all this doc says baby just isn't going to come so they are going to do a c/s. Well at least I get to go with her for the c/s. In the OR they start cutting and my client says she can feel it, hmm?? I'm thinking, ok, she needs more meds. But noooo...... they just keep going and her protests get louder and louder until she is screaming and crying that she can feel it and begging me to help her. I am about to freak out and calmly as possible tell the anesth. (who is reading a book and listening to music) that she can feel this and he says " oh no she can't, she just feels the tugging" Well whatever she feels it is hurting her so DO SOMETHING!!! He basically ignores me and I go back to trying to hold me clients arms because by now she is trying to reach down by the surgery site to push the docs hands away!! A few minutes later she actually passes out, I mean just BOOM, from screaming to nothing! I gently call her name in her ear and I can see she is trying to open her eyes, but they are all rolled up into the back of her head and all I can see is the whites. So I think it is probably just better to let her be than try to wake her up. Shortly thereafter her baby is "born" healthy little girl. Sum total about 43 hours of labor. I go and be with her baby so she is not alone. They left this poor little babe in the warmer bassinet totally naked and all alone. I take off my gloves and put my hands on her so she feels some human touch, meanwhile my heart is breaking for all that has gone on and now this poor baby is all alone and her mother is unconscious and doesn't even know she is here. Eventually I leave, thinking that everything is going ok and I am not needed anymore. I find out the next day that after I left the hospital, my client started bleeding and her uterus wouldn't retract or contract, whichever way you want to look at it. Doc had to call in 2 OB specialist surgeons and they operated on her for 5 HOURS!! They even had her mom sign a consent form because they thought they may have to do a complete hysterectomy to stop the hemorrhaging. Luckily everything ended up ok but we don't know if this 15 year old lady will be able to get pregnant again or carry a baby to term.

This was definitely the worst birth I have ever been to and now I am scared to go to another, I cannot do this whole thing again. I am still sick and upset by what I witnessed. I can only take so much of this barbarity that I see EVERY time I go to a hospital birth. I think I am gonna go curl up and be depressed for awhile now, thanks for listening.