WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

anaesthetist as to what is safe for the woman, because if they get stuck doing a 29
week praevia caesar on delivery suite in the middle of the night and she bleeds
and they need help, there isn’t any.
By 6am just when we thought we had got through the night quite well one woman
had to go for a caesar which was okay because she already had a DHB midwife
and our RN would scrub. But at the same time, the woman who couldn’t have the
epidural started pushing and continued for quite some time. We had an LMC ring
in who wanted, well I don’t know what she wanted because she was quite rude
and barely spoke to me. Then another LMC rang to say she had a lady coming in
who was going quite fast. The woman was fully dilated and pushing on the
doorstep when she arrived, so I cared for her because the LMC hadn’t arrived.
Amongst this I was worried about my placenta praevia client who was bleeding. I
hadn’t checked on her or the baby’s well being because I was busy with the lady
who was trying to push her baby out. None of the other three midwives had had a
break all night because I had my own patient load and I couldn’t relieve them.
They were entitled to breaks but didn’t get them.
By 6.30am everything fell apart. The registrar had completed the caesar, the
LMCs client who had been pushing needed assistance and I agreed so the
registrar went in there and ventoused that baby. Unfortunately there was no
paediatric support for an instrumental delivery so that was me again. Fortunately
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