Birthday Nurse

Whenever I tell someone that I work in L&D they 8/10 say "Oh, you're a BABY nurse!" Wrong. I am not really a baby nurse, I am a "mommy" nurse. True, lots of what we do depend on the baby, and until the baby is actually "outside" we pay lots of attention to Baby, and we make lots of decisions dependent on Baby...but, in the long run, we are the nurses that take care of the MOMMY. Lucky for us, the hospital has found it beneficial to hire an entire set of nurses that specifically take care of Baby once it is in the big, bad outside world. Well when new L&D nurses start on the floor, the people in charge have decided that we should all spend a day working with the Admit nurses from the nursery to learn what to do if in fact one of the "baby nurses" doesn't make it to our delivery. My hospital is the only hospital that I have found that is cool enough, safe enough, smart enough, etc to require a NICU nurse to come to all deliveries...

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 really am still here...just been so exhausted this is the first time I've taken time to sit down and think about everything that's happened. Last week we did more ante's...but after Wednesday...we're done with them! It all went crazy on Tuesday, when we walked in and ended up taking a 35.4 weeker over to the main OR to take out her appendix. She had this " excruciating " pain in her abdomen that wouldn't go away, and her WBC count was 21, so after a bunch of surgery consults we roller her, a big 'ole baby monitor cabinet and a c-section kit (just in case ) over to the main hospital for an open appy . Usually they can just do it laproscopicaly , but since she was more than 20 wks pregnant, they actually had to cut her open. So J and I had to sit over there for the entire hour case and watch the baby's heart rate. It was cool though, they didn't give her general anes because that wouldn't have been good for baby, so they just did ...

So Friday we got a little comic relief from my new favorite patient. We had 2 "custodial" ante patients who are in for the long haul, plus an induction who wasn't on the books, then a couple triage's later in the afternoon. Had an great vag delivery which kinda made up for the mess on Wednesday. The Mom and FOB from the fetal demise on Wednesday came over to see us before we left for the evening and brought over handwritten thank you cards. That really meant a lot to me. I didn't know what to say to them on Wednesday, but they were grateful for what I did. If I could do anything to make their loss just a little easier, and helped give them some memories of their baby boy, then I did what I needed to. Anyway, so this patient comes in because when she was at the office her doctor told her she was dilated to one and she was a scheduled for a repeat c/s ' cuz the baby was breech so she didn't want her to go into labor. Anyway, so we get her all settled ...

I've been thinking a lot about our fetal demise yesterday. This wasn't my first demise that I've helped with, but it's the first one that has been anywhere near term, and the first one that was actually considered alive at delivery and then died later. I guess the technical term is "expired" but that to me sounds like a gallon of milk being past it's expiration date. This is a baby, not a gallon of milk. When Mom and FOB walked in yesterday it just hits you "THIS ISN'T FAIR!" Mom was only 21, and her first baby and she looked so young and innocent, and yet so grown up and calm and collected. I know when she walked in she was still denying that her baby wasn't going to make it and she had this secret hope inside that everything was going to be ok . When we asked her the typical "why are you have a primary c/s" question, she didn't say it was because the baby was breech, or that the baby was going to die. She said "becaus...

I am way glad that I don't have to work tomorrow. After today, my head is spinning and I need some time to sit and think though everything that I learned and absorbed and experienced today. I told J today that I don't need anything else on orientation , because in the last 2 days, we have done everything. We did ante's and a vag delivery/recovery yesterday, we did a scheduled section today, and then we did a non-scheduled section for a fetal demise that totally just finished off my day today. I should have known that today was gonna be crazy. I thought J and I had gotten everything lined up to do ante's for a while so that was totally what I was expecting when I walked in, but no, we were scheduled for the 0900 c/s. That's cool too, I really don't HATE doing much of anything around there, I need practice at it all. So we got our little primip ready and as we're getting ready to walk back, the doc calls us from the main OR and says that his 0730 case got b...

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.....

How uncreative of a title is that...but at the moment that's all I can think of, so I'm sticking with it. I don't know why I'm so exhausted, but I'm getting ready to lay down and take a nap that I've been thinking about all day. I think I may die when I actually have to work a 12 next week...maybe I should try getting some sleep the night before and see what happens. I worked with a different nurse since J wasn't there today, which was totally ok but I'm ready to work with J next week. I really enjoy working with N though, she says it like it is and she's great at making me feel like I'm the one taking care of the patient, not just standing in the shadows. I was more than a little bummed and worried about how the day was gonna go when things didn't start off too hot with 2 missed IV sticks. The first one was totally crazy and bled fine until I tried to draw labs, then it clotted or something and I couldn't even run the fluids though it. ...

***Forwarning...I tend to ramble when I type, so my feelings won't be hurt if you just skim the blog and read the interesting parts. Happy reading!*** To make a long story short...today marked the beginning of the rest of my life...the rest of my life that I've been waiting the last 22 years for. I guess I'm officially still on "orientation" until the end of tomorrow, but today was my first shift on the floor as an official NURSE! Not just a nurse, but a Labor & Delivery nurse...on the same floor of the same hospital where I was born. That's kinda a cool feeling. The nurses that have been there since before I was born don't like it when I mention to them that they could have been my mom's labor nurse, and now I'm coming back to work with them, but they let me hang around anyways :) I just graduated from nursing school this past May, and this has truly been the longest summer of my life. I didn't pass my state boards the first time I took th...