As you may have guessed from the title of this post, this week I was in the nursery, NICU, and breastfeeding clinic. Which meant I was surrounded by babies, all week. I also worked 5 eight hours shifts, and while I know that's what most of the world works, getting up at 5:30 5 days in a row made me want to cry! And as this picture indicates- it was pretty intense at times! The way the nursery is intended to be staffed is with one nurse.
One nurse and sometimes as many as 25 babies! The good part about this plan is that our unit nurses the dyad-meaning the postpartum nurses are trained to care for the moms and the babies as a pair, and we try to keep the babes in the mom's rooms as much as possible. First thing in the morning, when the pediatricians are doing rounds, all of the babies come hang out in the nursery. One starts crying, upsets his neighbor, and the next thing you know the whole room is screaming! Not very relaxing! As soon as the doctors are done we try to get the babies out to the rooms. Before a baby can be discharged, there are a whole list of things that need to get accomplished. They have to get a hearing screen, pictures taken, get blood drawn for the PKU test (genetic tests we send away to the state), and get their cord clamps removed (just to name a few). It is the nursery nurse's responsibility to make sure all of this gets done. The other part of the puzzle is that we admit all of the new babies that are born throughout the day. There are alot of things that have to happen within the first hour of life. The babies get a full assessment (takes about 10 minutes), vital signs get checked every half and hour for two hours, they get their "eyes and thighs" (erythromycin in the eyes and hep. B and vitamin K shots in the thighs), and they get their first bath. It gets comlicated when you have a twin birth, or a vaginal delivery and a c-section two minutes apart. HECTIC! Twice this week we had eight or nine babies born during the eight hour shift I worked. Yesterday, doing a new admission, I had an important first- I got peed on. My fault, I was standing at the end of the warmer, and I hadn't put a diaper on him yet...next thing I know-pee all down the front of my shirt. Ugh. Little boys are trouble. I also spent a day rotating in the breastfeeding clinic (interesting, but lots of boobs). And on Wednesday I spent a day in the NICU. They say we might float down to the step-down NICU sometimes (where the feeder-grower babies are, nothing too intense).
As most of you probably know, I went into nursing, in short, because of babies. I wanted a job where I could get paid good money to hold babies all day. Later in the journey I found the Neonatal ICU, and thought that that was my future-as a NICU nurse. I knew it was unlikely to get a job in a NICU right out of school, and the position I did get was almost too-good-to-be-true. However, going into it, I figured I would tolerate the moms, but nursery would really be my forte. After this week, I find myself anxious to get back out on the unit with the mommas! The one thing I really like about the postpartum nursing is the teaching...and you can't teach much to a baby. I was really suprised to find myself feeling this way- I'm a baby nurse! But I guess it just goes to show that God really does have a plan and things happen for a reason. Next week, more babies.
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, this week I was in the nursery, NICU, and breastfeeding clinic. Which meant I was surrounded by babies, all week. I also worked 5 eight hours shifts, and while I know that's what most of the world works, getting up at 5:30 5 days in a row made me want to cry! And as this picture indicates- it was pretty intense at times! The way the nursery is intended to be staffed is with one nurse. One nurse and sometimes as many as 25 babies! The good part about this plan is that our unit nurses the dyad-meaning the postpartum nurses are trained to care for the moms and the babies as a pair, and we try to keep the babes in the mom's rooms as much as possible. First thing in the morning, when the pediatricians are doing rounds, all of the babies come hang out in the nursery. One starts crying, upsets his neighbor, and the next thing you know the whole room is screaming! Not very relaxing! As soon as the doctors are done we try to get the babies out to the rooms. Before a baby can be discharged, there are a whole list of things that need to get accomplished. They have to get a hearing screen, pictures taken, get blood drawn for the PKU test (genetic tests we send away to the state), and get their cord clamps removed (just to name a few). It is the nursery nurse's responsibility to make sure all of this gets done. The other part of the puzzle is that we admit all of the new babies that are born throughout the day. There are alot of things that have to happen within the first hour of life. The babies get a full assessment (takes about 10 minutes), vital signs get checked every half and hour for two hours, they get their "eyes and thighs" (erythromycin in the eyes and hep. B and vitamin K shots in the thighs), and they get their first bath. It gets comlicated when you have a twin birth, or a vaginal delivery and a c-section two minutes apart. HECTIC! Twice this week we had eight or nine babies born during the eight hour shift I worked. Yesterday, doing a new admission, I had an important first- I got peed on. My fault, I was standing at the end of the warmer, and I hadn't put a diaper on him yet...next thing I know-pee all down the front of my shirt. Ugh. Little boys are trouble. I also spent a day rotating in the breastfeeding clinic (interesting, but lots of boobs). And on Wednesday I spent a day in the NICU. They say we might float down to the step-down NICU sometimes (where the feeder-grower babies are, nothing too intense).
As most of you probably know, I went into nursing, in short, because of babies. I wanted a job where I could get paid good money to hold babies all day. Later in the journey I found the Neonatal ICU, and thought that that was my future-as a NICU nurse. I knew it was unlikely to get a job in a NICU right out of school, and the position I did get was almost too-good-to-be-true. However, going into it, I figured I would tolerate the moms, but nursery would really be my forte. After this week, I find myself anxious to get back out on the unit with the mommas! The one thing I really like about the postpartum nursing is the teaching...and you can't teach much to a baby. I was really suprised to find myself feeling this way- I'm a baby nurse! But I guess it just goes to show that God really does have a plan and things happen for a reason. Next week, more babies.
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