My Calling

I have found my place in the nursing world: Labor and Delivery.

The past two days of clinicals have seriously changed my life and as far as I'm concerned, 

I could stop nursing school here and now. They had us "scrub up" so we wouldn't get our school uniforms dirty--because with all the fluids in L&D, they would have never been the same. I think this helped us (the students) get more respect. You can't tell that we look any different, so we are asked to do anything the other nurses are. I was in heaven. 

Learning about pregnancy in school has truly taught me how perfect our bodies are 

to create and to birth babies. Women are built to do this. The process of labor and delivery blows my mind

and I love coming in to celebrate the birth of a new soul into this world. (So far...), it has been a truly happy and rewarding place to be. 

I love everything about the L&D unit--well, pretty much everything.

Do I love doing vaginal exams? I don't love it, but I find it interesting and I don't mind doing them.

I think it is neat to be able to feel the cervix going from 1 cm to 10 cm, preparing for that baby to come!

It is just another way, proving to me, that our Creator really knows what he's doing.

A quick story about yesterday. My coach (a nurse who I follow/help/learn from) and I received a patient from triage who was 5 cm dilated. She came into her room and we began assessing her and asking her the admission questions, which takes about 10 min. She was having contractions and was in great pain, but until we admitted her we couldn't give her any pain medication (sorry!). We were almost done with the questions when I could tell she was starting to push. "Stop pushing mom!", I said. We were NOT ready for this baby to come. But she wasn't listening. She was letting her body take control. I called the desk and asked them to page her OB doctor to come for delivery. BUT, he was in the OR doing a C section. So, we paged for any OB doctor to come to her room--you do not want a nurse delivery if you can help it. We set up the table (full of sterile supplies for the birth), hoping a doctor would come before we had to deliver her ourselves. Thankfully, a doctor came in a moment later. We gowned him up, the mother pushed 3 times and that baby was out--no tears or episiotomy (cut in skin to allow the baby's head) needed. This mom was in our room for 13 minutes before she had her baby.  13 minutes! Crazy! You never know what you're going to get in L&D but every day is filled with joy as these little ones come into the world on their own time frame.

To my friends who are pregnant, I'm so excited for you all and want to hear the story of your labor and delivery (so Katie and Kristina, I'll be expecting calls in January).