First Cesarean Section

So today I saw my first cesarean section. Mom was a primip with a breech babe that didn't particularly want to turn and too little amniotic fluid to get very aggressive with a version.

It was pretty incredible. My preceptor was assisting, and the doctor was very friendly to my being there. Once the baby was out and mom and dad were thoroughly distracted, he started describing what he was doing and what I was seeing. That was really cool. Of all the strange things to be impressed by, I noticed how easy it was to tell tissue layers apart, and with how smooth and neat the exterior of the uterus looks. This doctor did not (as I've heard many do) take anything OUT to sew it up.

Mom and baby did awesome. Any time anyone left the baby's feet free, up they'd go, right back into the position he'd spent the last month-plus in (frank breech).

There was no separation, really, but it bothered me how long baby spent in the warmer after the "peek a boo" parent show. And it bothered me that the warmer was probably about 10 degrees out of mom's sight beyond her drape...couldn't it be a foot more to the side so she could see? I can see the point of not having it visible in some cases, but when they're just making sure baby gets all the amniotic fluid clear and he's basically just alternatively yelling, startling, and looking around...why?

By the time we left, mom was happy and baby was happy, breastfeeding nicely back up in L&D. The crowd of family members that had come with them (I think there were 6 of them) was just thinking about coming in. At least we know she will have a ton of people around to wait on her while she recovers.

Another thing...I am not really understanding why mom and dad had to be separated as mom was being prepped for the surgery. If I got to be there, why couldn't he be there? Why couldn't he see the spinal being placed? What is the hospital afraid of? Worse, what does he think must be going on? Particularly with this family, where the dad had expressed a fear of being separated from his wife and baby (being led to a variety of hillarious-in-retrospect wrong places instead of to his wife and baby), it seemed unnecessarily cruel. I will ask my preceptor about this for sure, but I have a feeling the answer will be less than satisfying. At least the parents were never separated from each other or from their baby once the surgery began.