And I love my job......

Ahhh....the sigh of a content, tired, happy student nurse. What a great shift. And since my hubbie is sleeping since before I returned from the hospital, and I don't feel right about calling anyone to chat at midnight, I will share my evening with all you blogger friends!

Tonight I had my first laboring patient. The other shifts I've always worked with the moms and babies after delivery....not during. Tonight was supposed to be my first shift with my other preceptor on LDRP. The way it worked out though, she became charge nurse and I was buddied up with a diffferent nurse, another young, nice, fairly newly graduated nurse (which is so totally not intimidating...and I really like that!).

Our patient was ideal. Lots of family support, hardly flinched through each contraction. The only way you knew she was contracting was by watching her toes wiggled under the blankets.

Let's just say, the evening got pretty exciting after we came back from supper. I ended up seeing the beginning of a standard, low-risk labor, which progressed into some concerns, and ended up finishing off with an emergency cesarean section. The best part was that I wasn't able to do everything the nurse normally would do, being the first day with a laboring patient, so I really was able to take more of a supportive role for mom. I rubbed her tummy, talked her through procedures, made her smile a few times with my comments and questions, and had the brainspace to spend some of my time praying. Especially as things were progressing into more concerning symptoms, it felt like I was standing back and watching the whole drama unfold, even though I was right in there. Because I wasn't crazy busy and focussed on charting and preping for the OR, I was able to pray for the mom and baby...technically with the laying on of hands really, because I was feeling her contractions with my hand and rubbing her arm, leg, tummy...depending on what was happening....in support.

I loved assuming the role of advocate. Though I don't pretend to know a lot, the amount that I do I am definitely willing to teach and share with the patients I work with. I felt like an advocate multiple times when relaying messages of the mom's wishes and rephrasing things to mom that the resident was saying! Oops....maybe I shouldn't have done that.....but heck, no! I am the patient's advocate and mom needs to understand in terms that she can comprehend, what is happening. It also is more of a challenge when the medical staff have accents. Then I really feel like I have to translate!

It felt so great to be in the middle of all the action! It felt like the medical thrill in movies! I happened to be the one at the head of the bed as we started to wheel the stretcher from the room to the OR.....so I became the one pushing the bed down the hallway and into the OR. Oh, I had a few such moments that just felt great! By, the end of the shift, as I was riding the elevator down to the locker room, all by my lonesome, I did a little victory dance in the elevator!

So, to my patient of the night who gets a very special mother's day present, all you mothers, and to my very own mother,
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!