"discovered" an IUFD the other day :(

trying to tell this story in a HIPAA friendly way. sorry if its vague....

Was working in triage the other day. a patient came in, around 30 weeks pregnant. had a complaint that was NOT decreased fetal movement.we always ask if the baby is moving, and she thought she'd felt the baby earlier in teh day. She was nice, I chatted with her while i was turning on the monitor, plugging her name into the computer, etc. Went to put her on the monitor-nothing. I was moving it around, at first thinking i couldn't get it. sometimes it is a little hard to find them. i was palpating her abdomen to see if i could feel which side the baby was on, so i could better place the monitor. I felt a baby foot/arm/knee(something nubby, you know?) sticking up under her stomach. like baby parts do~ this time, when i touched the baby part, it didn't move. still couldn't find the heartrate (had been approx 2 min of trying to locate).

called second RN to help find it, she didn't either. patient starting to freak. called her doctor, who wasn't in hospital. got formal sono, and the baby was dead. she started to figure it out, was crying and freaking out, she saw the baby not moving on the u/s and was crying. her doctor still wasn't there yet.

i held her hand while she learned that her baby was dead.

ive taken care of IUFD's, i've been there when they delivered. I've never been the nurse to "discover" one. Never been in triage when someone comes in, thinks the baby is alive and find out its not. THis was the first one, and it was really hard.

it was really hard. it sucked. maybe almost more than when they deliver.