First rotation as an intern: OB
Lesson learned: Beware of precipitous deliveries from multiparous women!
Example 1: Woman, G4P3, being wheeled to L & D with intense contractions. Alarm goes off in her room, and I sprint over, only to discover 50,000 nurses crowded around her. The woman is still in the wheelchair and a head is coming out of her vagina! The nurses ease the woman onto the floor, the baby is delivered. Thirty minutes later, after we deliver the placenta and stitch up a second degree perineal laceration, the woman's chart is located. Under obstetrical history, it states the patient has a "history of precipitous deliveries x3". Ha! Make that x4.
Example 2: Woman, G2P1, with didelphys uterus and double cervix, arrives with her right cervix dilated 5 cm. After she has been registered and settled into a room, I leave for a few minutes. During the short span of my absence, her cervix has completely dilated and the baby starts to emerge--it's a footling breech! A nurse who happens to be walking by, notices what's going on, runs in and delivers the baby.
Example 3: Woman, G3P2, arrives in OB triage, moaning with intense contractions Q2-3 min. I check her cervix. She is complete/complete/+2. We wheel her bed immediately to L & D. She doesn't speak English but seems to understand my half-baked Cantonese. The OB fellow comes in and wants me to coach the woman through labor. I'm trying to tell her to "push like you're having a bowel movement" in Cantonese but I have a feeling that one syllable is off and I am mistakenly imploring her to "push like you have a big nose". Baby delivered quickly after 10 minutes of pushing, and luckily the real Cantonese interpreter appears. God knows I might have accidentally asked the father if he wanted to "cut the Empire State Building" instead of the umbilical cord.
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