Work Post
Tonight was tough. I was in the nursery and I started my shift with a sick baby and a brand new baby who was on a 72hour hold. These are both things that could keep you mildly busy on their own. But together, it was quite a lot to deal with.
72hr hold babies usually need urine and meconium samples collected. The poo is no big thing but getting a urine sample is ridiculously difficult, especially on girl babies. We have these barbaric little devices of sticky silicone attached to a bag to somehow collect their minute little baby pees. The anatomy of girls makes it almost impossible to get the seal tight and not have it leak out the back, so we put cotton balls there and wring out the urine. It is more putzy and time consuming than it even sounds and it is a 10 minute job every time you change a diaper. So you can spend 10 minutes cleaning up, rebagging and diapering the kid then another 10 minutes dealing with the pee, couple that with the fact that the poor kid can't be with its mom so it needs to be held...and you have one timeconsuming kid.
In addition my other kid had become jaundiced with an elevated bili at about 3 hours of age. By my shift his bili was rising, hgb falling, he had decreased platelets and was developing petechiae. I was very busy with this kid because he was under lights so needed frequent temp checks, I had trouble getting labs back, had to page the doc almost hourly etc. Turned out the labs were so long coming back because they were so screwed up. They never gave me the results or explained them to me, just told me they needed to talk to the doctor about them! I have never heard of them doing that and it really made me nervous.
The dad was so nice, we kinda bonded at the beginning of the shift during a lull in the insanity and I just felt so badly for him. He was just a nice decent normal guy, it was their 3rd kid and they were just the kind of nice responsible people you wish all babies went home to. The irony of this loved, wanted baby getting so ill so quickly, with no explanation lying across the nursery from this baby whose mother used drugs, didn't get prenatal care, etc is lying there healthy as can be, crying to be held. When the mother of the baby I shipped up to the level 2 nursery aches to hold her baby.
Sorry, I know that is a little incoherent but I am in strange state of exhaustion and nervous energy that doesn't allow me to edit. I worked hard for 9 hours straight with 1 bathroom break and 15 minutes away from the nursery at 9pm to pick up a salad at McDonald's. I also hauled my 60# worth of boys 5 miles in my 40# trailer today so you'd think I would be sleeping now...
Hope tomorrow is better. I almost wrote that it couldn't be worse but I am way too superstitious to actually type that out and leave it there. I just knocked wood too.
Peace.