Twins!

Today I had the privilege of helping with the birth of twins. A lady that I've been seeing for about a month came in for her weekly check (35 weeks gestation), complaining of some mild back pain. I decided to check her cervix, and she was 5 cm with membranes bulging through the opening! I called in the attending and he scheduled her for a c-section over our lunch break.

Note: normally lunch is a sacred time for me, as my blood sugar drops into subhuman levels in the late morning. It was a sign of how exciting this was that I was thrilled to not eat lunch.

We brought her in to the OR. The doctor let me be his first assist again. He carefully cut through all the layers: skin, fat, fascia, muscle, and finally the the uterus. There was one twin, head poised and ready to be born. He eased that baby out of the uterus, and I peered into the uterus, expecting to see the other babe. Instead, all I saw was a milky colored balloon with what appeared to be a lizard inside.

Honestly, I had never seen an intact amniotic sac...by the time I get to the mommies they are either already ruptured or the water bag has been cut during the c-section incision. I really wondered if everything was all right. The doctor knew what to do though, and he incised the water bag, grabbed the kid by the feet (he was breech), and lifted him into this world.

The babies both cried right away, and were a great size for 35 weeks (7 lbs and 6.5 lbs, I later found out). Such a blessing.

However, mom's belly looked like a war zone. One open uterus, two placentas, two bloody gushes following the placentas, two ruptured membranes...carnage. The surgeon was moving fast, removing the placentas and suturing, and I was helping him dab and suction and suture...until mom's uterus once again resembled a uterus. We tied her tubes (can't blame the lady after having twins), and we put it all back in the abdomen and begin to close her incision. Slowly my heart rate began to fall to normal.

I am so thrilled I got to see a twin birth, right before my ob/gyn rotation ended. SO worth not having lunch!