Noche Buena in OB

I spent my first Christmas Eve away from home this year. I was duty in the PGH OB-Gyne Labor Room and Delivery Room and the entire time I was wondering what feast my family would be eating later that night.. I had been rotating in OB the past month and considering it's a 2 month rotation, I must say that so far, it has not been that hell-ish. OB is considered by most PGH interns as the most dreaded rotation with Internal Medicine and Pedia not so far behind.

Maybe it's because we had 4 Christmas parties, the Lantern Parade, 2 Kris Kringles, and an interservice dance competition which we had to practice for several days with our OB residents.   They don't seem as "ferocious" as we thought they would be. (well, except for a handful!) It must be the Christmas spirit
that even the most stressed out individual would find himself humming to Christmas tunes.  I had 3 patients in the morning.. Even my OB normal case ended up delivering via outlet forceps extraction because the heart rate of the baby was dipping to as low as 60-90 several times! The baby's head would not descend even if the mother kept on pushing.  By mid-afternoon I was ready to sleep from exhaustion!  It was funny because our OOD (Obstetrician on Duty), Dr. Dy-Fernandez was already nearing term and as I was assisting her during one cesarean operation, she felt some discharge already.. Uh-Oh! Our OOD might give birth anytime now and she's still in the OR! Ang sipag!

Later I took some pictures of December 24 because unfortunately,  I was the intern picked to stay there because I had to do monitoring and BE/IV according to the preresident! huh? while everybody was out partying? grrr..

The Labor Room looked so clean! no blood, no lochia, no feces. the floor was shiny and the hall looked bright. no patients. Who wanted to spend Christmas Eve giving birth?

One hour later my co-intern called me to go up the OB residents' lounge to join everybody :) we had paella, lasagna, roast chicken, spaghetti, pancit palabok, fruit salad, pero shempre wala ng cake! hehehe. but we stayed there for 5 more hours because there were no patients downstairs. sharing gifts, stuffing ourselves with food, laughing and videoke till dawn.

Time to work again. 2 mommies came at 2 am. both primigravids! both unmarried, one 17 year old and a 19 year old. we had a running joke that we we're going to teach them Lamaze kc naman my patient kept on screaming! especially my patient who was crying at 4 am and some got irritated in secret because they were sleeping already. Malay mo si Baby Jesus yun so bad magalit sa mommy! The last patient gave birth before 7 am and everybody was coaching her to breathe properly.  By the end we were all clapping and rooting for her.  We told her that she should name her child Emmanuel. :)

It was a Christmas day like no other.  And one that I would not forget for years to come.