Post by Blaqify (@blaqify)

I will tell you what happens when a baby's head is out, but the shoulders are completely trapped behind the mother's pubic bone and won't budge. It's called Shoulder dystocia, an Absolute Obstetric Emergency

At first, the team doesn't panic. Shoulder dystocia has structured, step-by-step emergency checklists. For example, we quickly pull the mother's legs back to her chest [McRoberts maneuver] and press hard just above the pubic bone [suprapubic pressure].

But if the baby is still locked after exhausting the whole checklist? That's when obstetrics becomes a nightmare and you make THAT face on the Meme:

If the baby is still alive, Our goal is immediate delivery, using highly invasive emergency procedures:

1. Zavanelli Maneuver: The Clinican has to do the unthinkable, we push the baby's head BACK inside the vagina, back into the uterus, and rush the mother straight to theatre for an emergency C-section.

2. Intentional Fracture (Cleidotomy): If we can't push the head back in, we have to reach inside and intentionally snap the baby's collar bones to make the shoulders narrow enough to drag the baby out.

3. Symphysiotomy: If the baby is still completely wedged, we take a scalpel to the front of the mother's pelvis and cut through the cartilage that holds her two pubic bones together, forcing the bones apart to widen the birth canal.

If every maneuver failed and the baby had already died from prolonged lack of oxygen, the final resort to save the mother is destructive embryotomy - decapitation. Where we use surgical tools to deliberately separate the baby's head from the body inside the birth canal so the body could be delivered and the mother wouldn't bleed to death from the impending ruptured uterus.

This is why every midwife and doctor fears the words, "the shoulders are stuck."

Women are gods abeg 🙌🏽

Shoutout to every woman that have passed through this.

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