I had another day on the high risk delivery ward today. It was an early start at the buffet breakfast as I needed to be at the ward for 7am until 3pm. I had organised getting my uniform from the dispencer last night so it wasn't so much of a rush this morning to try and find the uniform place. Although I was slowly finding my way around, I still very easily get lost and as I am completely unable to read any of the signs, I could find myself in the wrong end of the hospital just before my shift is starting. 
I was suppose to be working with Kristina again today. Kristina was on the phones again so one of the midwives with a labouring woman asked if I would like to shadow her after gaining consent from the woman. I introduced myself to the couple and sat in the corner observing the care provided. It was a very strange feeling not being able to give care, I really had to sit on my hands.
The intrapartum labour care was very similar in lots of way but also different in others. One of the main differences is that the woman received an epidural infusion via a syringe pump that administered 5 ml/hr of the epidural mixture. I was unable to establish what the exact mixture was due to different drug names in Norwegian but this is something I will try to do on friday when I return. The epidurals work well at providing an abdominal pain relief block, but the difference is the women are able to still mobilse very well. They can walk around, move into different postions and pass urine independently. They also had different pieces of equipment to encourage mobility which they used a number of times. Keeping things 'normal' was of high priority where safe to do so. I think we try to acheive this in Cardiff on the high risk labour ward but this is quite often dependent on the midwive's feeling confident in using the equipment or the pool for example, whilst being able to contiously montior the fetal heart rate to a good standard and keep up with the large volumes of paperwork whilst trying to support the woman. They are paper light here which actually seems to make a big difference in reducing how long midwives spend documenting and recording information. I know this is something we are working towards in the near future at Cardiff, which is fantastic because I can see the benefits in how much additional time the midwives seem to have to support the women. 
The midwives seemed very interested in the research projects we have going on and how important 'evidence based' practice was when provided any aspect of care. Another thing there seemed impressed by was the fact we have an IOL ward, an OAU ward and delivery suite all on separate wards with allocated staff, they saw this as very organised and structured. I also informed them of our new hypnobirthing training for a number of midwives so this can be cascaded to try and support midwives to feel confident when caring for a woman in labour who is hypnobirthing so that she can have the birth experience she desires. I felt proud of what we are achieving at Cardiff. 
It was a really postive day and I was quite frazzled mentally by the end. I finished my day off with a long walk and dinner before having an early night. I was back in tomorrow morning at 7am on the low risk birthing ward.