Unexpected Delivery

Only twenty minutes to lunch, yet there she stood before us in a soggy shirt and a men’s rain boots that reached well past her nine year old knees and nearly to the hem of her ragged shorts. My second day at the clinic was shaping up to be interesting. “Please come Miss. My mother lost the baby and she won’t stop bleeding.”

She waited while we gathered our things and then followed us down to the landing explaining that she’d walked through the jungle to the clinic for help. After locating an outboard motor boat willing to drive down the creek we climbed on board and went in search of the nearest nurse. Half way to the main river we passed a group from the mission school and Elizabeth (my sister -the nurse) did a quick mid-creek switch from their boat to ours.

We stopped at the small three room shanty on stilts that the 9 year old indicated. Peering through the windows in our direction were at least four additional children in t-shirts and underwear. We found her in the bedroom of the three room shack. Crammed into the corner between the bed and the wall she lay in a pool of blood on the rough wooden slats of the floor wearing only a t-shirt.

With Liz lodged between the corner and the woman assessing the situation, the rest of us gathered around to help in whatever way we could. We listened while the woman, Roxy, gave us the brief details. Roxy was about three months pregnant. Earlier that morning she’d felt some cramping then two hours previous she had lost the baby, a little boy. Since then Roxy had lay on the floor bleeding unsure of how to extract the placenta which was not coming on its own. Although Roxy had not lost an inordinate amount of blood, she was none-the-less at risk should the placenta not be delivered soon.

Liz both looked and felt in the woman for the placenta while lamenting the fact that she did not have a speculum, forceps, or any other tools aside from the rubber gloves and an injection to control the bleeding. I soon found myself massaging Roxy’s uterus in attempts to induce contractions while Roxy tried to push the placenta out. Liz got into the action by holding the umbilical cord and gently tugging on it in hopes of dislodging the placenta from the uterus wall. After nearly an hour of very little progress and a lot of prayer we moved Roxy from the floor to the bed. Somehow the move was just what she needed and less than five minutes later the fully intact placenta slid out.

With Roxy cleaned up and resting we took a few minutes to examine the baby which one of the children had retrieved from the jungle where it had been thrown. While we felt sorrow for Roxy’s loss, it was awing to look at something small enough to fit in a single hand yet so beautifully formed. All the organs were visible through his semi-translucent skin and his veins and arteries snaked along just under the surface. Fingers and toes were separated and tipped with nails the size of a pin heads. Knuckles and kneecaps fully bendable and even tiny arches on the soles of his feet. David was truly right when he marveled, “you formed me in my mother’s womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made” Psalms 139:13, 14