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MAMA-KANGAROO 111
First of all I would like to emphasize how much this action has made me happy and given me hope for a better tomorrow, having in mind that my first delivery on the Maternity Ward in Sombor was a terrible experience, and I am mentally preparing for my next departure there in March… Namely, my first visit happened in February 2007, unfortunately during the renovation of the Sombor Maternity Ward, so mothers to be were sent to the nearest towns, Subotica or Novi Sad. Only the most urgent cases (and those with “connections”) remained in Sombor. I was exactly one of those cases (those with “connections”), for I myself am a member of the medical staff and a friend of mine works on the Maternity Ward as a neonatal nurse. The first bad thing that happened, which was nobody’s fault, was my own bad luck of having a very slow and painful delivery, i.e. on Thursday evening of February 1st I had my first contractions, not very strong ones, but during the whole next day they were extremely strong. I was admitted to hospital on Saturday, early in the morning, before 6 am, with the explanation that they could not get me through the protocol unless I am an emergency (an emergency is when the cervix is at least 3cm dilated). I asked the attending doctor that Friday why they were not inducing the labor since my cervix was opening so slowly, but he brushed me off by saying that the labor is not to be induced when the first contractions and the dilatation starts?! How I survived that night between Friday and Saturday nobody knows but me… and I stupidly followed the guidelines I had learnt in childbirth classes, not to drink anything when the strong contractions start, so from Friday evening I hadn’t had a sip of water. When I was finally admitted, I was put on the bed in the delivery room and told not to move from it… even though the Maternity Ward was operating with a minimal capacity and a very low number of deliveries a day, I would say that all the staff was accounted for… there were at least four midwives, and the neonatal nurses were present as well… I could hear them having fun in the room next to me. From time to time someone would come to check on me, hanging around for no more than a few seconds… then they would leave me to all my pain and suffering, from 6 am to 2.30 pm… during that time two lucky women had a speedy delivery on a bed next to mine, and I quietly ached, silently, for I had no voice any more (the mucosa of my throat was so swollen from panting and dehydration that I thought it would peel off of my throat and that I would swallow it… a horrible feeling that cannot be described). I asked for a sip of water, but they didn’t allow it… that friend of mine saved me, she came around noon, even though it wasn’t her shift, and gave me some gauze soaked in water to suck on. Honestly, not even that friend was constantly by my side during those last few hours of agony, but she helped… and I am so grateful for that! I finally gave birth on Saturday, February 3rd, 2007, at 3.05 pm, with the help of two doctors (who appeared in the delivery room around 2 pm, and before me hastily helped the delivery of that other woman). There was even an option of giving me an emergency C-section, because the baby wouldn’t come out even with the help of the doctor’s “push” (honestly, I was too tired to push) … at my request they helped with the last push and my beautiful baby boy was born, completely blue with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck… thank God he began to cry after a few seconds, and after a delivery like this everyone was afraid for his health in the first few weeks of his life… thank dear God there were absolutely no consequences!!! I, of course, was all torn (even though I had an episiotomy done), because of all the pressure by the chubby doctor and the baby of 4 kilos, so I had 26 stitches. I was lucky not to have the total tear of the recto-vaginal wall (which would be very hard to treat, as I found out later). Two hours after the delivery, sometime around 5.30 pm I was transferred to the room and given my baby around 10 pm, after all the babies had been given a bath (and fed with glucose I would say) and returned to their mothers (the Maternity Ward in Sombor operates on the ‘baby friendly’ system). The nurse that brought the baby quickly explained how to breastfeed properly and, of course, left. The bed was very uncomfortable, quite high … the crib next to the bed … after the wound had started to cool a sharp pain began, but I was happy to have my baby next to me, so it didn’t even occur to me to complain a lot … three of us in the room, and six beds. We communicated with our families through the window since we were on the ground floor… they smuggled the food through the bathroom window - we avoided opening the window in our room because of the draft. The toilet – a disaster … the cleaning ladies did clean it regularly, but when a woman is not able to sit on the toilet seat properly, but uses it half standing, anything can happen… and not every woman cleaned after herself… There was warm water only from time to time. We bathed with the lights off, because there was no screen on the bathroom window!!! We improvised later and pasted some bed covers on it. However, all that didn’t bother me as much as the attitude of the staff towards us did… Namely, not once did somebody come and explained or showed how to put a diaper on a baby … OK, it’s not that hard to do it, but why should a new mother know that? Maybe I had never had the opportunity to change a baby’s diaper, let alone when it came to such a small child… The rounds were in the morning and in the evening… those were the only times when we were put on the bed with our legs stretched apart… of course, the lights were on, screens on the windows NON EXISTANT! The nurses didn’t clean our episiotomy wounds (my mother tells me that in her time all the women were ‘washed’ with iodine both in the mornings and in the evenings). Since the pediatrician wouldn’t dismiss my child from the hospital immediately, we spent five instead of two days there (that is the usual length of time here)… my son was by my side all this time, and on the third day I started stumbling due to exhaustion, but mostly because of worrying, because I was able to understand the explanation that the doctor had given to her colleagues during the rounds, when she expressed her doubts about my son’s possible diagnosis (since I myself am a professional physiotherapist)… when the doctor saw me crying she tried to console me by saying that it might not be anything bad, but then went silent when I told her what my profession is and that I understood the full gravity of the diagnosis… such examinations should not be done in front of the mothers! Due to fear and worry I neglected my breasts… which nobody came to check on?! Luckily my friend ‘reminded’ me about them, and we came to a conclusion that my breasts were about to explode! They were all in bumps and in some places as hard as a rock. This friend of mine sent me a young midwife, the only one willing to help … and she did help me, even though I was about to faint… later I ‘took care’ of it myself after each breastfeeding, but I will never forget that experience… what could have happened if that friend hadn’t warned me about it? I would have probably ended up with mastitis and my child wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be breastfed! But the incident that I will never forget happened on Tuesday night … my child didn’t want to suck because his nose was stuffed… I was getting myself ready to get out of bed with great difficulty and walk over to the nurses, who are on the other end of the hallway … aching because of the pain… for a moment I gave up … I was so tired, and the wound hurt so badly… the woman next to me was sound asleep, and the woman in the third bed was not allowed to get up because she was bleeding too much. She was the one who ‘convinced’ me to press the button for the nurses, but I didn’t want to, I was somehow afraid to do use that button… My roommate, without much hesitation, presses her button… two midwives came running, out of their minds… asking what was wrong… the woman started to explain that my child didn’t want to suck because of a stuffed nose… the older sister started screaming at the both of us, saying that we weren’t normal, that they thought somebody wasn’t feeling well… God, I was so embarrassed! They told all the nurses, even the ones in the following shift about the crazy mother who, imagine that, pressed the button because of a stuffed nose!!! (I know that for a fact because my friend worked in that shift). It wasn’t until later that I reexamined my action … well, for the love of God, what are those buttons for? Are we supposed to use them only if somebody is dying? Well, aren’t they there for exactly that reason, to call the nurses if I need them … and not for the mothers to walk to the nurses’ room and beg them to come and help them … and then they get upset that you are even talking to them! Oh, there is so much to say… but, yes! My son, as many other babies on the Maternity Ward, was immediately after birth infected with the Streptoc. Aurelius bacteria (if I remember the name correctly), so we fought with a heavy eye infection for almost ten months… which is something that happens on our Maternity Ward too often… and there are often cases of infections of the milk ducts with this bacteria … a few days ago I heard a of a case of a newborn baby with mastitis?! I bet it’s the same bacteria. My letter is too long, even though I skipped many details… if you want to publish it, feel free to use the parts that you find interesting, you can also rewrite it, shorten it, of course as long as the point remains the same.
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STORIES FROM MATERNITY WARDS Mama-Kangaroo 002
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