The good and bad

Last night was one of those great nights where I had to be charge RN and labor nurse at the same time. Doesn't really work well doing these 2 things together, but we're so short staffed that it happens. We now have mandatory 12 call every month to try to help, but sometimes you just need another set of hands. Anway, my patient last night was in labor with her 1st baby. Her MD, one who is a very good physician but can be very manipulative told the patient from the beginning of her pregnancy that her pelvis is small and that she most likely would end up with a c/s. They are trained to know these things, I know. Well, the MD came in at 11 pm for another patient. She told me before she left that she was planning on sectioning her tomorrow morning so to turn off the pitocin, get her an epidural and let her rest. Anestheia was of course thrilled with this because it meant he had to stay in house all night when the OB expected to do a c/s in the a.m. All of us were crossing our fingers, hoping she would deliver vaginally. At 3:30 a.m she did just that. After weeks of being told her pelvis was too small. Very unfortunately, she ended up going up to surgery for a retained placenta. Turned out it was a placenta increta, where the placenta imbedded itself to deeply into the uterine wall and she ended up losing her uterus. This had been an IVF pregnancy and it was her first child. I know the family is happy that both she and the baby are healthy, but what if they wanted more children? Sometimes things happen that just aren't fair, but like my folks always said, Life isn't fair. But sometimes I wish it was.