New Job ...

Soooo....for all inquiring minds..... I Love My New Job!!! I'm learning soo much and it's all so very different from what I've spent the past few years doing, but despite the deer-in-headlights feeling I get sometimes from labor & delivery nursing I'm loving my experiences! Really, there is nothing cooler than watching a brand new baby take his first breath of air and let out his first belly wrenching cry!! I mean, wow.... I love it... I can't believe I thought twice about taking the position!! I've seen, ooh I think 4 births now...and don't you know I cried with each one of them. I couldn't help it...it's like, I'm fine until that very moment when baby pops outta mom & it's as if someone opens up the flood gates at that exact moment... the parents are crying, I'm crying, everyone in the room is smiling. :) It's a precious time in life for each person involved...it's life changing for the parents no matter what # child it is, and it's obviously life changing for baby...no more cozy, warm belly to grow in...and it's precious for the nurses and doctors who took part in making it all happen. It's great, I love it. The whole process is a miraculous act of God--pregnancy & labor itself--the more I learn the more miraculous it becomes. :) Granted, I've only seen happy births...I'll have to really really gear myself up for an unhappy delivery. Like the one last week where mom was 20 weeks pregnant with twins and one passed away in utero...so she decided to abort the 2nd baby due to 90% chance that he would pass way as well (I don't know the details as to why 2nd baby would also die). She was induced and had to go through the entire delivery process for both babies...can you imagine? I'm not ready to take on that kind of delivery--I need to get past crying over happy deliveries first!!

I've had 2 just barely teenage patients already...14 &15 years old. Very different to help a laboring adolescent. They revert to about 10 years old and then it becomes nearly impossible to have a decent delivery. It's so sad to me. There are children having babies...and really the babies will be the innocent ones to suffer. 14 year olds don't have the capacity to raise a baby alone. Both girls' boyfriends were at the bedside, but at the first mention of epidural, cervical check, bloody show, or vaginal laceration their eyes glazed over and you would've thought we were speaking Chinese (I guess that's not saying much--many men think we're talking Chinese when these words come up:). They were clueless...as were the girls. All they knew was that they thought they were dying and they wanted to be 'paralyzed from the waist down'. The girl told me "thousands" of girls at her school are pregnant. Thousands? I'm pretty sure there aren't even 1 thousand girls at your high school. It's just scary... apparently girls should be placed on birth control at age 12 these days.

What I have noticed in my short 2 or so weeks on the floor is that nurses and doctors like consistency...meaning, they like every patient to be exactly the same and for everything to go exactly as planned. And they really, really encourage epidurals. Which is fine I suppose, I agree epidurals are miracles, but it seems like if a mom wants anything different, or heaven forbid she brings in a birthplan then the nurses are immediately grumbling that "mom's gonna want to have everything her way" and I'm thinking "well yeah, it's her birthing experience--it should be her choice!" Now granted these nurses have seen it all--like the mom who goes in for an emergency c-section and says, "If anything happens, you save me first not the baby!!" Are You Serious!!?? There are some twisted women out there! OSU happens to serve the highest number of high-risk patients in central Ohio, so consistency is important for safety's sake, but it's nice to get that low-risk mom & baby who can continue to walk the halls & take a hot shower to help progress her labor the natural way rather than relying on oxytocin to do it for her. It's just always interesting in L&D, and I hope to maintain my feelings on pregnancy & childbirth despite the corruption that some oldies (but goodies I'm sure) nurses cast onto me. :)