Birthday Nurse

So I have LOVED reading all the comments to my post about the " perfect patient ." So here's my flip side to it...for all of you mom's out there who have labored, or who will labor someday, or any of you dad's/husbands out there who have been with or will be with your wife/significant other when they give birth, what would you describe as your " perfect nurse "? ' Cuz really, that's what I want to be!

It seems like forever since I've actually gotten to do a delivery! I guess I should kinda get used to that, ' cuz I know I'm not gonna get to deliver every shift when I work nights. Speaking of, it looks like it's gonna be in about 2 weeks, but more on the mixed feelings on that in another blog (not tonight!) I knew when I went to bed at 0000 this morning that I was gonna be in for a long day. I went up and visited all my buddies who are still in school in Lincoln this weekend, and so had a great 5 days off, but then of course got back late last night and was all geared up from my long weekend and didn't get to bed when I should have. I don't think I really woke up 'till about 1000 this morning. I had a prime induction, the kardex (our cheat sheet that gets filled out when patients pre -register. It has basic health history on it, G/P, special requests for delivery, etc, etc) said that there was limited English, so that made me a little nervous. It's h...

When I first started nursing I kinda thought that epidurals really weren't that big of a thing, and I always told myself in the back of my head that they were kinda the "easy" way out. My mom never had one with any of us 3 kids, and I figured that they were " ok " but you could really do the whole process without one...I'm starting to change my tune big time. After J and I got report on our cervidal from last night, we quickly did a precip delivery in another room at 0731, and then I promptly resumed care of the gal we originally had and t kinda stayed that way for the rest of the day. J had to leave at one, and came in a few times to help me out, like during the 7-minute decel after a hyperstim on 5mu/pit and when I couldn't find heart tones, but other than that, I did most of it! When we took over care, patient was 1/20/-3 and had "No epidural!" on her chart. Great...0645 is too early in the morning to see that. So when I started pit and...

I guess when you walk into work during a thunder storm that's been going on all night and see absolutely no green (ante) names on the board and every room has a red (labor) name...you know it's gonna be busy. And when you see that one of the room's has twins and there's another set of twins scheduled for a C/S you know you're gonna have lots of babies before the day shift goes home! I only got one of the 17 babies, but once again, I did it all by myself...almost. Even more than Friday. It was a VBAC which was the first of those I've done. It doesn't really change anything, except that you're m ore careful with how much Pit they get and you almost always get an IUPC so you don't hyper- stim . I got to FEEL a cervix change, from a very tight 2 to complete over a full day. Another multip who went fast at the end, but when she was till only about 5.5 at 1700, I was positive we weren't gonna meet the baby. But at 1751...here comes baby! I was po...

Friday was my day to work with my "other" nurse. I think it's been really good for me to have two main nurses that will let me work with them. J teaches me a ton every time I work with her, and then N makes me go out and do it on my own...and I ususally surprise myself with the confidence I come away with. Friday we had a carryover induction/cervidal from the night before. This was her second baby, and she was bound and determined she didn't need an epidural b/c she hadn't gotten one 18months ago with her first baby 'till she was 9cm, and by that time it didn't really help her. She was about 3 when I came on, and the doc came over and was denying any pain. Then the doc came over and broke her water...and then it started hurting. I figured it was gonna be a long day, especially after we started Pit and they weren't just "natural" contractions anymore. I figured I would be spending the bulk of the day in by her bed helping her through it. All t...

When I got to work on Tuesday I checked out how many babies we had at the hospital in the month of August...324! That's a lot of babies! Yesterday J and I did c/s...3 of them to be exact while the rest of the floor was completely full...maybe a good day to be in the back! When I left yesterday we'd had 13 babies just on day shift. Nurses get worn out after too many days like that! So I got to circulate my first c/s almost by myself...of course J was there, so I kinda got to do it on my own...right? I must say, my least favorite part of delivery is the cleaning the mom up afterwards, and it seems like there's lots of that with a c/s. You have to clean them up in the OR, and then again before they leave recovery. There's just lots of rolling and turning and wiping and it's just not my favorite thing to do. Oh well, we had some great families to work with. I like it when the patients are also nurses, because they are fun to talk to and they relate to what I'm doin...

So I got a little more taste today of what it was like to be "on my own." I felt pretty independent, with someone right there if I needed anything, but the nurse that I worked with (it was J's day off) was awesome about being there when I needed her, but otherwise saying "let me know if you need anything!" I did a PIH eval almost totally on my own, 2 recoveries really on my own, and I got to do a lot of a labor with minimal assistance. Well, probably more assistance than I realized, but I really did feel like it was "my" patient. I'm sure that in a few months I'll be wishing that I had someone to help me and check up on me, but right now, I'm kinda enjoying the somewhat-independence. All then nurses are great at encouraging me about everything, but N is great about saying "see, you know how to do this." "You know more than you think you do." I need to hear that, and hearing if from more than one person is what really s...

So I knew even before I started orientation that there are 3 basic parts to being a labor nurse: antepartum patients, labor patients, and C/S. Of those three, I'll take anything that gets me at least 1 delivery on my shift, but I'd much rather have a labor patient all day and end with a vag delivery than do a scheduled C/S, and I'd rather do ANY of those than do antepartum patients. Not that it's the patients that I mind, but come on, if I wanted to do antepartums I'd work on MedSurg or something. It just doesn't seem any different to me than sitting around and doing NST's all day. Some nurses love it, and I give them 3903 props for that, because I don't have that kind of patience. I love labor because something's always going on, there's just enough adrenaline to keep the whole 12-hours interesting, most of the time. Anyways, so today was my first day with J and for some reason nobody remembered that, so she got 3 ante patients. Bummer.....