Internship done, time for a holiday!

After 4 weeks the internship at Villa Maria Hospital is done. I will share the last days of our internship with you.

When we walked in Monday morning there was a woman in the labour room. She was a multipara and at 9cm dilatation. When the doctor checked her around 8.30am she was fully dilated. The waiting to start pushing started, although the woman already had the urge to push. As I told you before here they wait with pushing until you can see the head, where when it is possible I am used to start earlier. Finally I let the woman push to see if anything would happen. But the baby wasn’t going down and I could feel that the head wasn’t in the right position. I stopped pushing, but the woman had a really strong urge to push. The fetal heartbeat was going down a bit, so I asked for the doctor. When after a long time of waiting, we are now around 12pm, the doctor was finally on the phone, he said just wait and monitor the heartbeat.
The woman is talking to me in Luganda, she is in pain and tired. I feel frustration through my body and have to fight against my tears. There is nothing else to do but wait. I tell the midwife I will go for a break, I need some air. When I come back the woman is still there, nothing is written down on her partogram and I have no clue if anyone listened to the heartbeat. When I listen I am happy to hear the fetal heartbeat. The contractions are decreasing and the woman is exhausted. I tell the midwife to call the doctor again, she does. It is now 2.30 pm, the woman has been fully dilatated for 6 hours with the urge to push, but the head of the head isn’t presenting well. We are going for a c section. Eline and I go together. The midwife tells us I won’t go, you can receive the baby together. We discuss our plan for if we need to do a resuscitation. After another 45 minutes of waiting the woman is finally on the table in theatre, the doctor is ready to start. And out of nowhere we see the head coming. We are amazed. I tried everything to help the baby engaging and we have waited for more than 6 hours. Together with the doctor we deliver a screaming healthy beautiful baby boy (baby number 16) on the table in theatre. We bring the mother and baby back to the ward. The mother is thankful, she tells me that I saw she was in pain and I was the one to take good care of her. The mother of the woman is grateful, she offers Eline and me money but we kindly decline. I can’t express the happiness I felt when the baby was born, it made all my thoughts about the waiting disappear.

Tuesday was a quiet day at the ward. We walked with the rounds with the midwives to see which patients were admitted. Last Friday a woman delivered by c section because of face presentation. We saw the baby when we arrived and the face was swollen because of the pressure it endured during the pushing at home. During the rounds I asked the midwife where the baby was and she told me he passed away on Sunday. I was standing in the middle of the ward and feeling overwhelmed. When reading the charts of the patients I see another baby died on Sunday. I don’t know the cause of the deaths, but you start thinking what if. I tried to block it, because it is too much. I decided to go back to the house and in the afternoon we went to Masaka to have a good lunch and work on our research.

On Wednesday we went on an outreach with the immunization department of the hospital. The village wasn’t that far from the hospital, we travelled there in an old Ambulance. I can tell you it was a very bumpy ride. We checked the children's health, weight them and the nurse gave them their vaccines. The other nurse and student wrote everything down. I am used to filling in a lot of papers, but it looks like here it is 10 times more. The children were amazed by us, the Mzungu, and the kept on waving at us.

Yesterday was our last day of the internship. Sadly it was very quiet at the ward, so we couldn’t do another delivery. We brought stroopwafels (Dutch cookies) to thank the midwives, by the fact that the box was empty very quickly we could see they liked them. We took a lot of pictures with the midwives, they were all so happy that we had come. They were very thankful and told us they would miss us. Midwife Florence told us we were the best team the school had sent, which was so nice to hear. It was weird to say goodbye, because the chance I will come here again is very small. I am very thankful that I had the opportunity to work as a midwife abroad and I have learnt so much here. After saying goodbye it was time to see the principal. We finished our observation report the day before and had sent it to her. She was very happy that we had come to their school and told us we had done very well. We scored 98 points out of a 100 for our report! What a great way to finish the internship.

We are now staying at a great bed & breakfast called Villa Katwe in Masaka. And from Sunday till Wednesday we are going on a safari to Queen Elizabeth National Park. Wednesday on Thursday we will be back here at Villa Katwe. And on Thursday evening we will travel to the airport to leave to Amsterdam early Friday morning. So to finish this blog, like my boyfriend would tell me if I ask what time is it, “Time to have a good time!”

Lots of love from Uganda!