Obstetrics Day #1

Today was the first day of my rotation on Labor and Delivery. I woke up in the slight panic and needed to take at least 10 deep relaxing breaths before heading out the door. I was so jazzed up, I was a little concern that I had accidently given myself seretonin syndrome, a bizarre fear I've been harboring for a few weeks now.
Anyways, I wasn't super excited about Delivery. I had loved pediatrics and wanted to stay there. Maternity freaked me out, because I had no previous experience to draw upon and didn't really feel fit to care for anyone's reproductive plumbing. Plus, the word fundus always make me giggle in class, and I didn't want to insult anyone if I burst out laughing when they gave report. Thankfully, my anxiety level started to fall after my third soothing cup of coffee and I found out I had been assigned duty in the nursery. My experience in caring for babies in much more advanced than caring for their mothers, so I felt comfortable swaddling infants for the next 12 hours. However, when I got to the nursery, I found out all the babies were off with their new moms, rendering me utterly useless. After 20 hopefully minutes where I prayed my clinical instructor would just ship me off to some place I could disappear, like the OR, I was assigned a nurse to follow and a patient. She was not postpartum, but had given birth to a little boy a weekend ago before developing preeclampsia. She was also an NP who worked in the ICU at my school.
Preeclampsia sucks. It is high blood pressure greater that 140/90, with protein in the urine, low platletes, terrible headaches and epigastric pain, visual distrubances, and the nasty habit of causing seziures. I have no idea why it happens, and it freaks me out that so much can go wrong so quickly. It is however, diagnostically interesting, at least to me, and the use of mganesium to treat is bizarre because normally levels of over 2 are not great and my patient's was 5.8, which in this case is considered theraputic. Also, preeclampsia was on an episode of House a few weeks ago, which really is the greatest learning tool available.
I had a great day with her. A few hours of chatting and two foot rubs later, I that she was awesome and gave her my email address when I left. Interestingly, I found out that she had been doing "natural family planning" where she monitored her cycles as a method to prevent birth control. She was married April 12. She was prgnant April 18. She told me "I think we need to re-evaluate our methods..."
After lunch, to my surprise, I found out I was still considered the nursery room nurse and there was a baby I needed to care for. I walked into a room and quickly realized that my new patient hadn't been born yet, but was apparently coming soon. The nurse, pedatrician, and I set up suction, tubes, and blankets while the mom pushed, and I whispered to the doctor, "Um... this is my first day..." and he was like "um.... really? Wow, intense first day huh?"
The birth was what you would logically expect. A watermelon sized head was attempting to fit through something much much smaller. I watched the fetal monitoring strip that reported the baby's heart rate, and thought "Oh this is total shit" as it declined to dangerous levels. The doctor was forced to quickly cut an episotomy and pull out a baby that we grabbed. About a billion things suddenly happened at once, and I started adding up the APGAR score in my brain, while I tried not to cry/puke/pass out. After, I took a "bathroom break" where I just sat in the stall clutching my cellphone, our generations comfort item.
I've decided I love labor and delivery.
I brought 10 grain muffins, because I had a bag of 10 grain cereal in the pantry, and I really hated it, so I figured I'd bake it up. They were a total hit with the nurses, who requested the recipe a million time. I was relieved, because I really thought they were crappy muffins, but they enjoyed them. Here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS:
1 large Egg
1/2 cup Sugar
1/3 cup Margarine
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 cup 10-Grain Cereal
1-1/4 cup sour Milk or Buttermilk
Mix 10 Grain Cereal and milk; allow to stand for 10 minutes while preheating oven and assembling other ingredients; cream sugar, margarine, and egg together. Add dry ingredients and milk mixture. Stir only until mixed. Spoon into greased muffin pan. Bake at 400°F for 15 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

I added blueberries and almonds to mine, which gave it nice color and a good crunch. I also ended up with 13 instead of a dozen.