Good Times and Bad Times

Up until now, every birth I have attended has gone according to plan.  If a woman has high blood pressure, it eventually comes down, every blue baby pinks up quickly and every low tempurature fixes itself.

On Friday, we had a woman come in that was fully dilated and breech.  A breech delivery can be very dangerous and even here, women would get a Ceserean.  If the head does not come out first, like it is supposed to, the body can stop labor and the baby can suffocate.  She came in and there was no way we were going to be able to transport her in time for the delivery.  So we went ahead and delivered the baby feet first and miraculously, everything went fine.  The baby and mother were totally fine and we were all in ah of the delivery and we were able to think about how cool the delivery was, and we barely thought about the danger.

Then, we had a woman come in last night who had already had 2 miscarriages and was legitimately thrilled to be having a baby.  During shift this morning, we went to go check on her and make sure she was doing ok and could not find fetal heart tones.  We transported her the ER, where they will take her from now.  It was awful to be sitting in her cubicle with a doppler and not being able to find anything. 

I was confused by how a healthy baby can go from being perfectly healthy to dead.  I just reminds me that things in the medical world happen really fast and do not always resolve themselves.  The human body has the amazing ability to take care of itself and adapt to everything we do, but sometimes it just can't handle it.