Pure wonder

Early start this morning...got onto the floor a little before 5:30 to meet the intern. I got to hang out in the nursery while we were waiting, so no complaints there. Shortly thereafter we began helping out with postpartum rounds. Once more the issue of contraception came up, as one of the expected questions for the new mother is "what kind of birth control do you want to use?" It's kind of sad, really...you're talking to this woman, often holding her child, and you're supposed to ask how she wants to make sure that she won't be holding another one anytime soon. Anyway, once again the intern (different intern this time) rather surprised me with the pleasantness of her reaction to my statement that I could not and would not counsel about contraception. Of course, the patient I saw had had a tubal ligation after her delivery, rendering the question rather pointless...

The next thing for the day was grand rounds, which was a pretty decent account of the history of obstetric anesthesia. The presenter's occasional references to religion caused a bit of eyebrow raising on my part (I may have been reading too much into it, but it seemed like she set up a sharp contrast between the logical, humanistic view and the "religious" view which was exactly the opposite), but it wasn't a focus of the presentation. From there it was back to the clinical floors.

At one point when all three of the MS-3s were together in the central team area, one of my classmates asked me about what I had said on rounds about contraception, wondering if I could clarify a little about my moral stance and the reasons for it. In the end, it turned into a pretty decent discussion among the three of us; I'd like to think I did something to clarify my understanding of (and the Church's teaching about) abortion, contraception and sterilization. As a quick aside, if anyone has questions about any of those things, I'll be more than happy to speak with you about them.

After that came the true highlight of the day. I had signed up to participate in a 10:30 C section, but when I got to the OR at 10:17, I was just in time to see a real live miracle. One moment there was nothing but a hole in a woman's abdomen; not ten seconds later the surgeon was holding a baby girl. She was pretty blue (which I'm told is fairly common), but otherwise looked great. I couldn't see mom, but the look on dad's face told a story more eloquent than any ever written. It took a couple of minutes for the pediatrician to assess the infant (she was a breech baby, relatively cyanotic as previously mentioned, and needed a bit of a workup, which I was blessed to be able to help with), but when he was finally able to bring the child to her father...it'll have to suffice to say that no words exist that could do justice to the beauty of the moment. Everyone should have the opportunity to witness that at least once...it was an instant of truly pure wonder.

The rest of the day was pretty smooth, although nothing nearly so exciting as the delivery happened. I met a few more expectant mothers and nervous families, went to a lecture, and did the standard clinical-ish things. So far, two days in, things have been ok; I'll be hoping and praying that that continues.

That's all I've got for now...back with more updates tomorrow. Till then, peace and God bless!