Obs and gynae day 1

Up at 7am to have breakfast. French toast, bacon and syrup, my favourite! Excited to see some babies being delivered. Was on shift with Prachi who has been on O&G for ages so she was going to show me the ropes. Had to get changed into fresh scrubs and then made our way onto the ward.
Here there is a private room for paying patients and a delivery room with 2 beds in it for those that can’t afford to pay. Next to the delivery room is basically a holding room for women to labour in. There are 3 “beds” but usually at least 5 women in there, some of which have to stand up. They are shouted at and told to be quiet if they make too much noise!
They are assessed intermittently for cervical dilation and only when they get to 10cm are they moved into the delivery room. There are no partners allowed and so these poor women have to go through it all by themselves. Saw 2 deliveries both of which had episiotomies, both seemingly unnecessarily. Once baby is delivered it is taken into a room next door and assessed then put in a little crib away from Mum. There are posters everywhere about the importance of early skin to skin contact and breastfeeding but this just doesn’t happen. Some of the babies are in this room for hours before they get given back to their Mum and so don’t get fed. We spend our time in between deliveries cuddling the babies and trying to comfort them.
One delivery happened in the holding room as the baby basically just fell out! There was no sense of urgency to help the poor woman.
Stayed in the delivery room until midday and then headed back to the house. Had some lunch and then went to my room to relax for a bit. After this I sat and made plans with Hannah, Emma and Lisa to go to Cebu weekend after next. We booked our flights and hostel so now all of my weekend plans are sorted until I come home. I also did a bit of laundry from the weekend.
We had dinner and then decided we wanted to go out for a glass of wine. Went to a place 10 mins walk from our house in a hotel. It was a rooftop bar but unfortunately there was a thunderstorm and so it was raining heavily. We sat inside and had wine and cocktails which was really nice. Headed back at around 10pm and video called Roger which was really nice. Had a good catch up for over an hour and then headed to bed.Read more