Difficult Delivery!

elizabells, BSN, RN · Jan 31, 2008

:eek: :eek: :eek:

If I typed what I said out loud when I read your post, they'd ban me in a heartbeat.

I've seen a U-shaped forceps mark on a face, but not a CHUNK taken out!!!

preemieRNkate, RN · Jan 31, 2008

Oh I have seen some real doozies! I have a running list in my head of who I would want to deliver my future babies and who I definitely would not! How about in the OR when they ask for the vacuum during a c-section? Um, you're making the hole FOR the baby, make it big enough! Some poor babies with head bleeds as a result of vacuum deliveries, bad shoulder dystocias, the list goes on and on. Hope the baby makes a speedy recovery!

Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP · Jan 31, 2008

Ah, yes. Some pretty bad ones I have seen. One of the worst was a kid whose head looked like ground hamburger meat from the VE.....had been vacuuumed x 40 min before they finally got her out. It was awful. Amazingly she had only a small cephalohematoma.

It really twerks me when I see these people trying to deliver a baby lady partslly when they have absolutely now idea how to do it. I'm sure it could be done in many cases, but not with Mom lying flat on her back and a 1st-year delivering. Once we had two LGA kids (one 11lb, one 12lb), one with a broken clavicle, the other w/ a bad humerus break. :angryfire Poor kiddos.

dawngloves, BSN, RN · Jan 31, 2008

I've seen c/s where the OB is crawling into the mom's abdomen. My favorite is when they don't make the incision big enough and the baby gets stuck halfway and they are ripping apart the cavity to get the baby out.

Jolie, BSN · Jan 31, 2008

I cared for one baby who suffered severe facial injuries from forceps, including a corneal abrasion, and a torn lip. I thought the child was born with a cleft lip when I first saw it, but then learned that it was forceps damage. So sad!

danissa, LPN, LVN · Jan 31, 2008

Same the world over it seems, babies with forceps WOUNDS! babies who should have been delivered long before by C/S.., who have been in secondary apnoea. You just think...what the ??? Who is responsible for the injuries, seems at times no one puts their hands up. taking on the fractured lives is soul tearing though. Avoidable bad deliveries, thats the worst part of the job........

Hindsight is a great thing however.............

rph3664 · Jan 31, 2008

Did the doctor do this because s/he has a thing about teenage mothers? I understand a lot of "girls who were sent away" had birth experiences like this :angryfire but this is 2008!

There is a plethora of debate about unnecessary c-sections but in a KNOWN situation, it's the right thing to do.

Sweeper933 · Feb 1, 2008

Did the doctor do this because s/he has a thing about teenage mothers? I understand a lot of "girls who were sent away" had birth experiences like this :angryfire but this is 2008!
There is a plethora of debate about unnecessary c-sections but in a KNOWN situation, it's the right thing to do.

Like I said above - I'm not sure about all of the details concerning the delivery... I think part of the reason for the OB not wanting to do a C-section was because Mom was so young - didn't want to have to make her deliver all of her babies by c-section afterwards. However... was all of the trauma to the baby worth it?!??!?!

The baby is doing much better. She's been a horrible eater on top of everything (although I don't blame her...) She's starting to move some fingers / wrist on the brachial plexus injury arm, and she's moving some finger tips under the splint-like thing on her broken humerus arm. And the chunk taken out of her cheek from the forceps is also looking a lot better. I just feel bad because the only thing she can get for the pain of her broken arm is tylenol... doesn't seem to work enough for her.

NebraskaRN · Feb 1, 2008

I have seen some injuries but the injury that was one of the worst was a slice in thte back of the infant from a scaple with a c-section that required plastics to close the wound.

crissrn27, RN · Feb 2, 2008

The Obs not making the c/s incision big enough is the worst. I have seen a ground beef head from a ve in a c-sec. Believe me, that ob is on my 'will not ever deliver a child of mine' list. Sometimes, you just want to yell at them............CUT IT BIGGER, STUPID!

In that case, the Ob was trying to avoid cutting a tummy tattoo. The mom was even saying don't worry about it, by the Ob was determined to prove she could get the baby out without messing the tattoo up!

RainDreamer, BSN, RN · Feb 2, 2008

A chunk taken out of his cheek?! Yikes!! Poor kid!

We just had a kid that was a failed vacuum ..... after they tried the vacuum for over 30 minutes (!!). Isn't there some kind of limit on that stuff?? Still couldn't get the kid out so they had to push him back up inside and then sectioned the mom .... which took forever to get the baby out. So yeah, we were pushing blood and everything else because all the blood was in his head, I've never seen a baby's head so big.

After seeing that, I would run out the door screaming if they ever came near me with a vacuum.

These poor babies!