Jumping Delivery

For normal delivery, the Sisters never asked me to help them. Thus, for two years, I only handled abnormal delivery, while during the internship I had never been allowed to manage complicated deliveries.

The one in front of me now was obviously abnormal. On palpable, I knew the fetus was in transverse position; Cesarean Section was indicated. But I could not do it. There was no general anesthetics and I did not have the medicine and needle for lumbar or spinal anesthetics. I used the old obstetric—funnel-shaped wooden—stethoscope to check the fetal heartbeat. It was still alive. What I could do was to wait and observe because it was too late to manually reposition from outside.

I prepared the equipment for embryotomy. I hate doing it but there was no other option to save the mother’s life. When the fetal heartbeat was negative, I started the procedure. I entered my left hand into her womb, found the neck, and then broke it with a decapitation hook, and etc. Having tried to minimize the damage to the fetus for about one hour without result, I had to extract internal organs in the abdominal cavity one by one to reduce the fetal size. It was a dangerous procedure because I could cut the mother’s womb with sharp equipment.

Even with most of its internal organs removed—piece by piece—I was still not able to take out the whole fetus. Three hours had passed. Both the mother and I were exhausted. She was in pain, I was in frustration. I stopped the procedure, sat next to the bed, and watched her in despair. My gloves and apron were covered with blood and fetal tissues. My back hurt from prolonged bowing.

Suddenly she got up and jumped over and over on the bed. I stood up but did nothing, ready for blocking her from falling off the bed. Miracle. Suddenly the amorphous fetus fell onto the bed! Thanks God!