A Marathon of Medicine:
Part 4 – Don’t drop the baby
by Cassie Boggs
As my third year of medical school progressed and I completed more of my core rotations, I learned to have more confidence in my knowledge. But I wasn’t thrilled when my OB/GYN rotation started. I dreaded having to do pelvic exams and Pap smears and was scared to death of making a mistake during a delivery. To add to my fears, I was assigned to my hometown of LaGrange, Ga. What if I had to perform a pelvic on someone I knew?
The first morning went well. I had my own desk and computer (a rarity for a medical student) and spent the morning in clinic. Someone mentioned in passing that our practice had a woman in labor at the hospital. “Great,” I thought, “Maybe I’ll see a baby born today!”
My first patient was a routine OB early in her pregnancy, so all we had to do was measure Mom’s growing belly from pubic symphysis (the front edge of the “bowl” made by the pelvis) to where the uterus ends (after 20 weeks of pregnancy, somewhere between the umbilicus and the breasts), listen for the baby’s heartbeat with the Doppler and ask Mom a few questions.
There were many more such routine visits, and just as I was starting to feel comfortable in my role as “doctor,” I walked into an exam room where my fear was realized – there was someone I knew from high school! I faltered with awkwardness. I could not remember what to do, what to ask. But she was preoccupied with her baby, having “bumped her belly” in a minor car accident. As my attending took over the interview and exam, reassuring her the baby was fine, we got to catch up a bit. My first fiasco in OB/GYN was successfully avoided.
As the day drew to a close, I was thrilled to find out I’d be going to the hospital for a delivery. I grabbed my white coat, jumped into the car and quickly drove the half mile to the hospital, where I sprinted up the stairs to labor and delivery and had my scrubs on before my attending arrived. He asked me if I was ready to deliver a baby.
Me? On my first day? I was ready to watch, not catch.
I knew everything in the book about delivery – the cardinal movements of the infant, how to deliver the baby’s shoulders – I had memorized all of that the night before. I was ready to recite pages and pages of the textbook, but an actual delivery?
Suited up in a sterile scrub gown, gloves and knee-high booties, I sheepishly stepped to the foot of the bed with my attending at my shoulder. With the nurses urging the mother to push, I soon saw the top of the baby’s head. At that moment, my brain began a mantra, “Don’t drop the baby, don’t drop the baby,” and I went on autopilot.
My attending later told me I did a great job, but I don’t recall many details. Seeing the baby’s head outside the mother; how difficult it was to get the shoulders through Mom’s pelvis; clamping and cutting the umbilical cord. Most of all, I remember the constant refrain in my head, “Don’t drop the baby, don’t drop the baby.”
Afterward, driving home, it hit me – I was the first person to touch that baby girl! I could not wait until my next delivery!
The rest of my six weeks in LaGrange flew by. I performed innumerable pelvic exams and delivered many more babies. I even saw some complicated deliveries that brought back that tinge of fear, but during one of them, I realized I was no longer afraid for myself, no longer cared if I looked stupid in front of a patient or my attending. All the fear was for my patients. I wanted them all to have uncomplicated deliveries and healthy, beautiful babies. Happily, all of my (yes, my) babies went home just that way.
And I didn’t drop a one of them.