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Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 10:08PM
Kristyn Tells the tale…
I work as a CNM in a large and busy military hospital. Prior to taking this job in 2006, I worked in a similar civilian, public health practice, so I was used to crazy things happening. In my old job, my favorite story was the "baby in the pants!" birth — a mama having something like baby #6 delivered inside her stretch pants between the elevator and the L&D triage room; but that's a different story.
When I was new to my current practice, I was still learning how things went there. One night, I was on call with a newly-minted staff doc (fresh out of residency, and very very green). We were running a full deck, as usual, and were quite busy. The hospital operator paged overhead, calling, "A doctor or midwife is needed immediately to the command suite bathroom!" The doc and I looked at each other, and he said, "You have been doing this longer than I have, YOU go!" He was terrified.
Well, I wasn't scared of the birth, but I had no clue where the "command suite bathroom" might be! During the few moments it took us to process what was happening, the operator paged overhead again: "Staff OB provider is needed STAT in the hospital lobby!" By this time, one of our awesome RNs had grabbed a precip pack— a small delivery kit with just the basics — and took me by the arm. We ran down 2 flights of stairs and made it into the lobby only to find...no one. We looked at each other, puzzled, and then we heard a commotion from the bathroom nearby. We barged in and discovered two (male) soldiers, the baby's dad, the baby's grandma, and an obviously delivering woman on the floor.
The nurse and I dropped to the floor beside her, opened up our precip pack, and prepared to catch a baby. I tried to convince the mama to get into the wheelchair that someone had brought in, but she wasn't having any of that. She pushed once, her water broke, and a sweet little girl sailed out into our hands. As is our custom in an uncomplicated birth, baby went straight to mom for bonding— no cord cutting or separation. We wrapped them up in warm blankets (that nurse is a genius — she had gotten those from the warmer before we left L&D), got them into the wheelchair, and the whole crew moved upstairs to deliver the placenta and clean up.
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