Birthday Nurse

Maybe it's because I hadn't worked for 8 days...but this weekend was an adventure! I loved having 8 days off, but I'm afraid it may have been a little too long, cuz all of a sudden 3 in a row seemed like a LOT! Thursday night we did a cervidil that did nothing and ended up being cut Friday afternoon, and I also had a ROL that was a G7 who came in banging out contractions every 2 minutes that were off the chart. We watched her for the last 4 hours of the shift and she never changed, but was still contracting pretty regularly after fluids, vistaril , terb , and a morphine/ phergan combo IM . But nobody wanted to send a term G7 home still contracting that often. I think they sent her home mid-morning on Friday. Friday night was when it got interesting. I think every L&D unit has "codename patients" who are frequent fliers for a very LONG 9 months and everyone celebrates after they deliver :) It seems like some docs specialize in these kinds of patients too. A...

I really do like work, I was just telling someone last night about how much I love work. But after working 6 out of 8 nights...I'm ready for a few nights of sleeping when it's dark outside! I know it could be a lot worse, it was never more than 3 in a row, but still, that's a definite switch to the night shift! Last night had the potential to be crazy, but turned out not too bad. We started with 3 antes, but one was a set of 35wk twins that everyone thought was going to deliver. We went 2 out of 3 home before 2100, and I had the twins pretty settled down but then another "early labor" patient walked in about 2145 that kept me running. I think ER sent up 4 patients in an hour and a half last night! That is too many... The twin mom had come in early in the afternoon and had been 2, then later on 3, then even after terbX 2, vistaril and fluid she was about 3-4. She was rating her pain and had gotten some nubain right before I got there. The doc said that she real...

I haven't done 3-in-a-row in a while, but it really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I'm exhausted and going to bed at 1900 tonight, but I'm really OK with that! We were busy enough last night to keep us all on our toes... Story #1: Gotta love those shift-change catastrophes. When I walked in right at 1830 last night, the unit looked slightly deserted but everyone who was there was a little high strung. I guess about 1810 a lady had walked in 33 wks and said that she had severe right upper quadrant pain. She said it may be contractions, but they just felt funny. The nurse got her on the monitor, got about a 5 minute reactive tracing and then it was the crash. Baby didn't look HORRIBLE, but dropped from 150s to 90's. When I got there she was being rushed to the OR, general anesthesia and the doc was yelling "get the NNP , we're going to have a 33 weeker !" They thought her uterus was rupturing, but when they did the C/S her abdomen w...

So I was all set for nights to be lots of sitting around after Tuesday night. Last night, I think I sat down and took a drink about 0200 or so... Chipotle is still pretty tasty about 0245 when you're starving! We did a delivery about 2130. Kid was seriously +1 or +2 when we started and she could have delivered a lot sooner of she had given any effort to pushing. There were 3 of us in her face really trying to get her to do anything. There was no pressure against that kid's head with that first 45 minutes or so of pushing. Then her lower uterine segment oozed and oozed, methergine , still oozed. So she got extra pit, and she's gonna have some bruises on her stomach from our "mashing." I think it's the weirdest thing when you check the fundus and the cervix sticks out like a tongue. Ha!! Our cervidal across the hall came in the same time we started pushing in the other room so another nurse kinda helped us tag team. She came in saying "I've been havi...