"Don't push!"

I started school this week. We had a 6 hour class on Monday and Tuesday. Then we had 12 1/2 hour clincal on Wednesday and Thursday. My first day of clinical was in Labor and Delivery. I love it there. You never know what's going to happen....which leads me to my story. We have a patient who comes in through triage. We are getting her to sign all the necessary consent forms and we get to the consent for a blood transfusion if she were to need one and she would not sign the form because she is a Jehovah's Witness. We are struggling to communicate with her (and by struggle, I mean the nurse and I are looking like total fools using hand gestures) because she is spanish speaking ONLY!!! She is quite young and has one more child at home and she is 35 weeks pregnant. Apparently, it is quite common for woman who come from Mexico to not want an epidurral which was the case with my patient. I start her IV and get her all set up and we just let her labor for a little while. She is in active labor (PAIN!!!) and she is not making a noise. She looks calm as calm can be. She tells us she wants a little pain relief so we go in to give her some much needed drugs but she tells us (hand gestures) that she needs to go to the bathroom. So we decide to check her because she needs to poop which is a major sign that she is complete and ready to push. The nurse checks her and sure enough she is complete and ready to push. The doctor leaves the unit for just a minute while we were going to get everything set up. The nurse leaves to waste the medication we didn't give the patient and tells me to stay in the room until she gets back. I'm sitting in the room watching the fetal monitor and still looking stupid because I'm just standing there not able to commuincate with this girl at all. I turn away for just a second and when I look at her again, she is gripping onto her boyfriends hand and the siderail and PUSHING with all her might! Remember that the nurse is not in the room with me and this baby is going to be small and she doesn't have any drugs so she is going to push unlike most people who have an epidurral. I tell her in a very stern (panic) voice "no impuhe!" (obviously I don't know how to speak or spell spanish) I look under the sheets and I SEE a hairy little head COMING OUT!!!! CRAP, CRAP, CRAP!!!! I run to the door and yelled at my nurse "I am a nursing student I am NOT delivering a baby" She ran in, had enough time to put on gloves, sit on the bed and literally catch this little baby!!! It was pretty cool.

I need to learn spanish.

I am exhausted. I'm not sure what I was thinking volunteering for this summer thing. Thats all the excitement that happened this week. I'll write more when I can.