A New Slant on Personal Incompetence

Last week the nurses had difficulty hearing the fetal heart of a particular woman - even when the baby is well, we occasionally struggle to find the heart with our simple fetoscopes. Luckily there is an ultrasound machine just across the hall so we can walk her a few feet to confirm or dispel our fears.

That day the clinical officer who scanned the woman decided he saw a still heart; he told the nurses and he told the woman. It was her first pregnancy and now she believed she was laboring to deliver a dead baby; her anguish resounded clearly in her cries with each contraction. Several hours later, when the woman was well into an abnormally protracted labor, Msiska decided to listen in again and heard a heartbeat. She called me over and I also heard the heartbeat. Together we scanned the woman and clearly saw the heart beating. We told the woman her baby was fine and a section was arranged. In theatre I was handed a baby boy who needed some resuscitation but quickly perked up. He only cried through couple breaths and then calmly and attentively took in his new world. I wrapped the baby and brought him close to his mother for her to see. The new mom looked at her baby gazing back at her with wide eyes and asked confused, "Is my baby dead?"

A couple days later I saw the clinical officer who initially scanned the woman and had told her her baby was dead. I told him the story and said the baby was very much alive. His response, "God is great!"