| Nigeria
by Ruth Arrowsmith
Guest Writer
This interim, I went through labor and delivery and had a baby--and I wasn’t even pregnant. I spent my interim at the maternity ward of Evangel Hospital in Jos, Nigeria. As a nursing major, my goal was to get practical hospital experience. I definitely achieved that goal, as I spent at least 40 hours a week in the hospital doing rounds, reading charts, helping with clinic and--most of all--waiting for babies to be born.
During my time there, I was able to watch over 20 deliveries, and each one was amazing in its own way, although one in particular stands out to me. On Tuesday, January 21, at 2:05 pm I delivered a beautiful baby girl. Although the baby wasn’t technically mine (as in I didn’t actually heave her out of my own tiny birth canal) I was just as excited as the mother, and I received many congratulations along with her. It was an incredible experience. I did EVERYTHING (with some help and coaching, of course). Checking the fetal heart rate and frequency of her contractions every half an hour, I monitored the woman (Felicia) from 9 a.m. until she delivered. In my breaks from checking my patient, I would go into the labor room and practice all of the things I had to do by intricately waving my hands over an empty delivery bed. I was so nervous and wanted nothing more than to execute the delivery perfectly. Fortunately, I was nervous in vain. Felicia did all the work, and I caught the baby. There were so many people in the delivery room (most watching me, the weird white girl, instead of the patient), but she was very gracious and cooperative.
After delivering the baby (which is a wonderful and long process deserving more than half a sentence’s explanation but I’ll spare you the gory details--it was a really weird feeling, very warm) I suctioned out the baby's nose and mouth and clamped and cut the umbilical cord. Then, because birth is such a messy business, I cleaned up the mother, the table and the instruments. After I got the mother comfortable and in bed, I turned my attention again to the newborn baby. This involved holding her up in the air by her feet to measure her, weighing her and cleaning and dressing her to make her presentable.
The icing on my cake was taking the baby to her family. It was heart-warming to see the love that flowed between husband, wife and baby. Although this wasn’t the first and definitely not the last time I will witness a delivery, through this particular experience where everything was at its peak, I totally forgot that anything else mattered. I was bursting with the sheer joy of life and a fear of God that can only come from a true and personal revelation that we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made!
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