1st shift 19/07/2010-2-/07/2010 10pm-6.30am

1st shift down and I have already seen 5 Philippino babies being born!

After arriving at the clinic (which is just next door to where I live), we sat down to listen to the midwives from the previous shift take us through the patients they had had in the clinic and those who were to be passed onto midwives working my shift.

After hearing all the information we prayed together and started our shift.

The clinic consists of a birth room, a postpartum room, a kitchen (with a friendly little cockroach- despite being clean) and then an area where women wait for their pre-natal clinic check-up's.

Once inside the birth room, you change your shoes into birth room shoes in order to keep things as clean as possible- you can choose from the wide range of freshly cleaned crocs or flipflops all kept on shelves just inside the door. There are five birthing beds that can all be partitioned with curtains in one room and also a lounge where the midwives can relax or sleep if things aren't busy. Various different shelves hold different instruments and equipment.There is also a small area where the baby gets examined, weighed, measured etc.

At the beginning of our shift, different people were assigned different women at varying stages of labour and three babies were born in the first 3 hours! I was able to be present at all three. It was incredible and the women here are amazingly calm. This clinic is completely natural and so no pain relief drugs of any sort are given. Philippino women are sooo tiny, they look like children themselves! Well, actually some of them are- a few weeks ago my friend Katie-Beth caught a baby for a 17 year old girl who had already had 2 children! She had all her children in the space of 3 years.

So last night was intense! We had four girls and one boy born and I was zonked by the end of it. In fact around 3pm it, it got quiet again- nobody was in active labour, and then at 5.30am after having just fallen asleep, we got woken up to a woman arriving in an ambulance who came in and gave birth within half an hour! Another woman also went into active labour at the same time and gave birth a few minutes later.

As soon as any signs of labour are noticed, charting starts- this bascially means recording every single thing that happens or changes during labour including measurements of vitals for both the mother and baby.

So there we go, not sure what else I can say that is not going to put you off your dinner.... if their mother or partner is there with them, we generally encourage them to help out in different ways and also make the mother milo once she has given birth.

I think I will leave it as this for now and post a few pics of the baby I saw born first... unfortunately have not got picture with parents yet- maybe on their follow up appointment... but so far I can say- MIDWIFERY IS CERTAINLY FOR ME!