i am me

call me...

THE BARGAIN QUEEN.


2 minutes rummaging through discount bins have proven fruitful.

these 3 pairs of shoes you see, cost me 30AUD overall. not each.

very happy la. cos i need new black shoes since my plain black shoes all died on me due to the countless kilometers of walking and running around.

...

ekka is coming. don't really know what it is. but it seems to be some sort of carnival fair-type thing. with animals and rides and games and food and such. thought it might be a fun occasion for the SISTER to come over and she is! wheee!! joy of joys. really haven't spent enough time with her. it'll be a full 3 days when she's here. on saturday, i'm planning on taking her shopping in harbourtown since she laments that she's been deprived and hasn't had the time to fulfil her insatiable fashionista appetite. harbourtown would be just the place for her i reckon. full of bargains and pretty little things that she adores. then on sunday, i'm taking her to church and then to ekka just for a look see. in the evening, maybe we'll go have a nice dinner overlooking the river or something. and then on monday, we'll just walk around the city and then it's back to melbourne for her.

...

obs and gynae is proving to be quite interesting. although i know now, that i will never want to specialise in it anymore. gone are my childish dreams of delivering my girlfriends' babies. no thank you. not after what happened last friday night.

i was on graveyard shift at the birthing suite and i thought as it was a friday night, it would be exciting and filled with ladies lining up to pop out their babies.

i was oh-so-wrong.

i got there at 10.30 and was just in time for the handover session from the nurses of the previous shift. after being assigned to a midwife, we went in to see the patient on her list. who happened to have been in labour for the past day. and i swear. it was the longest labour ever. the afternoon before she was admitted, her waters broke, but when she got to the hospital, she wasn't dilated enough. so they told her to go home. the next morning, she came back in and they finally admitted her and induced her to speed up her labour. by the afternoon, it wasn't going anywhere. and by evening, she was dilated to about 5-6 cms. hurrah. step in the right direction. by midnight, after 2 hours of just sitting there, staring at her sleep while her contractions came and went, she was dilated to 7 cms. oh lordy was it taking forever. she was chock full of painkillers to numb her contractions and so she slept through it all. at 2.30am, we checked and finally, she was fully dilated to 10 cms. YES! finally. some action! i glanced at the clock. it's only 2. i'm supposed to be here til 8am. i should be able to see one more and hopefully, have a go at delivering it.

again. oh-so-wrong.

she wasn't ready to give birth yet as her baby's head hadn't descended properly. so again. we had to wait for another couple of hours. by 3.30, the midwife checked again and said she was good to go and that she could start pushing.

won't go into the details. but push she did. til she was literally purple in the face. but her baby wasn't coming out through the birth canal fast enough. after an hour of fruitless and i must say, very painful pushing, we had to call in the doctors for advice. they decided to use a vacuum cap to help pull the baby out while she pushed. as the minutes ticked by, and after pushing for, what i swear was an age, the mother finally cracked. she had been very placid and even tempered throughout the whole process until now.

'why's the epidural not working?! i f**king feel everything!!'

hee hee hoo hoo hee hee hoo hoo

'AAAAAARGHH!!!! get the hell out of me!'

hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo

husband wipes wife's forehead.

'can you NOT wipe my hair into my face?!'

hee hee hoo hoo hee hee hoo hoo

'OH! you're kicking me now aren't you! you little shit!'

hoo hoo hoo hee hee hee

husband gives her a drink of water.

'can you fill the cup up and not give me that little bit to suck?!?'

oh boy. it doesn't sound as bad as it does. it was actually quite comical. with the husband looking all flustered and trying to help but being extremely useless at it and the wife trying with all her might to push that baby out.

finally, with a seriously mighty ROAR, the mother pushed one last time and the baby was out!

it was honestly the most exhilarating things i'd witnessed. but also one of the most tiring. after cleaning the baby who weighed in at 9.8 pounds and was can't remember how long, but he was long, the mother finally got to cuddle and feed her baby. now that was a sight to behold. finally doing something right, the father went around taking pictures of mother and child.

by then, it was 5.30. the nurses took one look at me and told me to go home. that there would be nothing to see there for another 6 hours.

crap. so much for mothers lining the corridor.