Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Abdominal Distention?

So I've been here 5 months now. I've done hundreds of prenatals.... hundreds. But today was the first day I asked my translator what he meant exactly by "abdominal distention".

Silly right?

Doesn't everyone know what 'abdominal distention' means. It's when your belly sticks out too much after a cheese burger and fries! The pregos here are often complaining of 'abdominal distention'. I write it in their charts as 'bloating'. But I was wrong...

Way Wrong.

After a bit of confusion and lots of explanations (on my translators part) of how eating traps air in the belly causing the abdomen to become uncomfortably distended, did I piece together that my women are complaining of gas pains.

Yep. Gas pains.

A better midwife would have figured out there was a difference between bloating and gas pains four months ago. But hey... we had a nice laugh about it anyway.

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