I did my first C-section by myself this morning and I was so nervous, but everything went well.  I don’t know how I heard it with my ear plugs in, but at 4 am I woke up to knocking at the door and a faint “Lisa are you there?”  It was a short term volunteer who was on call and was coming to get me to let me know I was needed for a C-section.  I always thought that the walk from the surgical call rooms to the trauma bay at Summa was the longest and most painful walk in the world in the middle of the night . . .  but I was wrong.  The walk from my house to the hospital here is much worse.  Just imagine walking half asleep down a dirt road in the pitch black night with no street lights, waving a little flashlight around in hopes of scaring away the snakes that might be on the road and that was me walking to the hospital that night.  I was so nervous.  Since I have been here, I have performed quite a few C-sections with other volunteers that have experience in OB, but I was still sometimes having difficulty getting the baby out.  That is what really scares me.  The surgery itself is not that technical . . . it is making sure you can get the baby out which is the tricky part.  That night I was the only one on campus that could do surgery and so it fell to me, with no back up across the table to help me out if I got stuck.  I knew this day would come and I have been dreading it.  I have not been standing at the table scrubbed and so nervous to start a case in a really long time.  It is defiantly not a feeling I like to have.  In the end all of the worrying was for nothing.  The case went great.  I was actually able to get this baby out faster than I ever had before, it really just popped itself out and then the rest of the surgery went without a hitch.  The baby was presenting through the cervix with its face first and so when it was born its lips and eyes were all huge and swollen.  Mom and baby did great and were discharged home POD #2 (that is right . . . C-sections stay in the hospital two days and vaginal deliveries only stay in the hospital for 6 hours before they are sent home!).