This is my term for Family Nursing. I knew I'd have an easier time academically, which has proven true. I'm getting great scores on my exams. I also knew that I would hate the clinicals. Also true.
It's not so much that I hate them, but its a love-hate relationship. Probably best explained in some hightlights.
The babies:
Taking care of newborns, some only hours old, is really fun. I love their little pink bodies, how sleepy they are, and how much they need us. Its the families that I can't stand. (Not all of them, mind you.) One patient I had was a little girl who was perfect in every way. But in my morning assessment, her hands were starting to tremble. Just 4 hours later, her whole body was. Turns out her mother's urine had tested positive for drug use during delivery and this little girl was entering withdrawal. Of course mom acted shocked and couldn't see how it was possible. Maybe the test was wrong? Mixed up? The savvy nurses, who have had conversations like this a depressing number of times, didn't fall for it. "We have the cord blood, and it's being sent to the lab for confirmation. Whatever you have been on is going to show up, so you might as well tell us..." It went back and forth like that all day, trying to drag information out of the mom so that the proper treatment could be done. Wasting time, as the baby continued to spiral downward. And after she spends time in the NICU, and about 3 weeks being tapered off whatever drugs mom was on, this little girl will go home. With mom.
I grieve over that.
Another patient of mine had a trach. He was such a smiley little nugget, born way too early to a teen mom. (Her 2nd child). He was several months old but still needed the ventilator. His lungs may not be strong enough to breathe for himself for a very long time. I had never taken care of this kind of patient, and so was terrified to look down to see his face screwed up, red and crying...but it was completely silent! What a scary thing to watch! It made me never want to take my eyes off of him, because crying is how babies signal when something is wrong...but this little one could not be heard! Some day he will go home, with this mom who is still a child herself.
I am also a volunteer "Baby Cuddler" at my home hospital. An easy walk across the street for me, and the Pediatric floor is desperate for extra hands, especially at night. I have insomnia anyway so its no biggie for me. Win win. One night I was holding an angel baby, and the nurses informed me that he was 2 weeks old and nobody had ever been to see him. Not parents. Not grandparents. Of course...I had to stay for hours after that because I figured he was way behind on getting any human contact.
The worst one for me was this week. My little BUFA baby. (Baby Up for Adoption).
I went into the nursery in the morning and this little guy was being held at the nurse's station instead of just laying in his bed like the other newborns. He was about 6 hours old. I didn't know he had been surrendered by the mom at that time. All the nurses were naming him, since he didn't have one. Looking at his thick, dark hair sticking up in all directions...I contributed "Elvis." But they settled on Lucas. Since my own patient was rooming-in with mom, I decided to take care of all the babies in the nursery, and at times, he was the only one in there. Which was how I found out he was up for adoption.
For some reason this really bothered me. All the other babies were learning to breast feed. Moms and dads were counting their fingers and toes. They were wearing hand-knit caps instead of the hospital issued ones. Their little wrist bands matched the ones on their mommies. He was banded to the social worker. He just seemed all alone in the world and nobody was celebrating his arrival. (Yet).
So, at tremendous cost to my soul, I decided to be his surrogate mom for the day.
I fell in love with him instantly.
Any time I wasn't busy with my own patient, I held him. I would take him into the other room, away from the noisy nursery, where there was a rocking chair and give him attention. I counted his fingers and toes. I took off his cap and let him snuggle into my neck and feel skin-to-skin contact. Hear my heartbeat. I carted him around in one arm, and stood doing my homework at the counter with my other hand.
Then he was put in his bed and rolled next to the circumcision room (a place I chose not to enter) and I nearly had a fit. I was at war with myself. Part of me wanted to go in there with him so he wouldn't be alone...but I wasn't sure I could watch him go through it! (I made my brother take my son in when he was snipped!) I kept hovering near him by the door, finally venturing into the room because he started screaming when they strapped him down and I couldn't stand that. As soon as I put my hand on his little head and whispered to him...he fell asleep on the table. I stayed until the very last moment when the doc had the instruments in her hands.
Then I bolted.
What followed ripped my heart out. Apparently this doc took about four times as long completing his circumcision as she normally took. Right outside the door I rounded with the med students on a couple of other babies and tried to ignore his screams. I felt like I had an internal hemorrhage. To stay busy I got his bottle ready, intending to cram it in his little mouth the second he was done. It felt like hours later, but he was finally done and I whisked him out of his bassinet and back to the rocking chair. He sleepily guzzled the whole bottle.
When it was time for his newborn assessment, the pediatrician saw that he was being held, and knew that he was up for adoption. She said to her medical students, "We will save this one for last, because he is being held right now and he needs that more." I freaking love that woman. I felt exactly the same way. Together we combed over him, and I was a nervous nellie that he may have had some flaw that would impede his ability to be adopted right away. The doc smiled up at me and said he was perfect in every way. I agreed.
She had just completed her exam and was holding his naked little body face down after the spinal check when he proceeded to urinate like a sprinkler all over her, himself, and his whole bed. We all cracked up and she just handed him over to me, naked and wet, looking like a pink little baby bird. With one arm, I changed the whole bed as he fell asleep in the crook of my arm. Skin to skin.
That day I cried during clinicals for the first time in nursing school. Just rocking him and wondering how anyone could ever give him up, even knowing that it was better that he was going to new parents the very next day than staying with a mom who didn't want him. It just made me so sad that nobody was there for him on his first day in the world. Luckily I was alone with him in the rocking chair when it happened, so my lack of professionalism wasn't noticed.
But we rocked and I told him about his future. I prayed for his life and what it would turn out to be. I joked and told him he might grow up to be the next great hockey player. That his parents were definitely giving him a car for his 16th birthday and that he'd wear J Crew the rest of his life. But mostly I just wished for him to be surrounded by love for the rest of his life. And I'm believing that that is what happens to him. As I write this I know he is with new parents who have gone through so much just to get him. Who yearned for him. And this comforts me, even though I still miss him.
And that, friends, is why I don't want to take care of babies.
They freaking break my heart.
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