"The Secret to Life is Love"

That quote was on a poster in the maternity hospital today and I thought it was great! It completely described exactly what was going on in that room. There were so many soon to be mothers and new babies there that it was a room full of love. All of those women would give anything because of the love they already had for their unborn children. I had a patient today that did not even know she was pregnant till that morning and was having a miscarriage at 21 weeks. It was one of the saddest experiences of my life to be there with her. I had my camera with me and was able to take a picture of the baby before it was taken away so that she could see it. There was so much going on in the delivery room today that there was no one to even talk to her and she was left sitting on the delivery table all by herself. I was able to stay with her and hold her hand through the whole process.It was quite a painful process and there is no anesthesia in the hospital. My hand was quite sore by the end of it, but I'm glad that I was there for her. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand everything that she said, but I think we were able to communicate on a completely different level. It was an amazing experience. She kept looking at me and just saying thank you over and over again. Of course she was very sad over the events even though she had only known she was pregnant for about 4 hours. It was a testimony to the strength of love and how important family is! The entire experience of being in the labor room was interesting to me. They have a very large room that has on average about 25 women in labor. None of them are making noise, and every single one of them is going without any pain medications! Once they are complete they are moved to another room where the woman must move herself to the delivery table in the process of having the baby. Now I have never had the experience of being in labor but it seems that it must be very difficult for them to move themselves. They also all give birth in one big room with several beds. After a woman is removed they simply wipe down the bed that is covered in a plastic tablecloth like cover and bring the in the next woman. Very different from the states. They also remove the baby almost immediately if there are no problems, and the baby is sprinted out of the room if there are problems. One of my deliveries had a baby that wasn't breathing and had a broken clavicle and I don't think I have ever seen anyone move so quickly as the nurse did to take that baby across the hospital to the nursery. Luckily the baby was fine, and as a note to Bryan and Andrew- not a single of the live babies died during my shift today!