Strange days

I had 2 interesting days in clinicals. Yesterday I spent my last day in Labor and Delivery. I saw 2 deliveries. The first while uneventful really ended up a little strange. After the baby came out the MD was delivering the placenta and the proximal (closest to the placenta) part of the umbilical cord came out shredded. The MD says "That's strange" and we all look and there is shredded (IN STRINGS) umbilical cord. Really odd considering the baby came out pink, squirming, and screaming. The doc speculated it had to have happened just as the baby came out. (Of course, otherwise that baby would have been hypoxic and blue) I saw same baby today in the nursery and he's doing fine. The second birth I saw, the baby came out too fast and was, actually kinda blue but breathing. I got to hold the oxygen mask over her while the primary nurse suctioned and suctioned until we got her little airway clear. She was also doing well today.

Which leads me to.....today, I unfortunately spent my last day in the nursery and it was again another fun day. I was holding one baby though and whoever put her last diaper on put it too loosely and green watery baby POO soaked my scrub shirt. I got to change into one of the surgeons blue scrub shirts for the rest of the day.
The strangest thing that happened today was I, just finishing feeding a baby, when my instructor comes up and tells me she wants me to do another newborn assessment on a newly delivered. I was taken back because the nurses usually like to do their own and only really let us do them once, each, for check off reasons and as I said before, I did mine the first day. To get to the point, I thought it was weird and so did my classmates. So new baby comes in, we put him under the heater. I look at his head first, elongated but otherwise normal, chest normal, legs normal, neck, legs, feet normal. Then I go to his hands and low and behold there's a 6th digit on his left hand. It was attached to his pinky finger and loosely hung ,small, and nonfunctional.It had a small nail and everything. So I call my instructor over and show her and she just smiles. I was being tested! She knew about it & she just wanted to see if I would catch it. It was pretty small so if you weren't looking straight at the hand you could miss it.


A Polydactyl hand before and after removal

It all stemmed from a story she had told us in hand about doing an assessment check off in the past with a student and both of them had missed an extra digit on the hand. Lesson being, you should count the fingers and toes as well as everything else. FYI, the rest of the assessment turned up normal.

All and all.....good week, glad it's over and I'm tired. I have to study study study this weekend for the unit 4 test Tues and the Final the following Tues. So please excuse me if I don't post too often in the next 2 weeks but I'll try my best to keep ya current.