Fun Day at Work
I had a really fun day at work today. They called me in early so I got there at about noon. I took care of two recently delivered moms on Labor & Delivery and got them and their stuff and babies out to the post-partum floor and then spent the rest of day shift taking care of just them. This was great because I got to help both of them with their breastfeeding challenges (one had a mastectomy on one side and another had breast reduction surgery) within the first hours after birth, which is optimal, but not always how it happens when we are busy.
I really enjoyed being able to focus on just two families, and especially to be helping with the breastfeeding. I love being able to help people really early, before they can make mistakes that make it more difficult (poor latch->sore nipples, bottling->nipple confusion). And new babies are so awesome about wanting to eat and being alert, it can be so hard to teach them when they are 6 hours old and have been bathed and want to just shut down for the next 18 hours.
So, then I was extra from 3-7 but stayed very busy helping the post-partum nurses get started and then going over to L&D to finish recovering a mom and bring her out. This was my favorite family of the night, mostly because she was so receptive to the BF teaching and her baby was such a great eater. She also had a lovely, respectful, helpful family, which made it fun.
When I started in the nursery, it should have been fine, as I only had one bath to do and one new baby from a section to finish doing checks on. Unfortunately my new baby couldn't maintain his body temperature and had a dangerously low blood sugar so I ended up having to transfer him to the Special Care Nursery. Though we got baby up there quickly, it was still a time-consuming process and got me behind in the nursery.
Almost as soon as I transferred that baby I got another baby into my nursery with some respiratory distress. He maintained his O2 sats but was doing a lot of work to breathe so I kept him undressed in a warmer where I could observe him closely. It is hard watching a kid work to breathe and I tried various interventions without much success. Had orders from the peds for if he dropped his sats, but otherwise was observing him. Finally called SCN, to come eval as I just didn't feel right about him. I was glad I did because they came down and did a thorough assessment and discussed their findings with me so I could learn from the situation and did a deep suction (which I cannot do), brought up TONS of crap, and shortly thereafter the kid was breathing easily and crashed out into an exhausted sleep. Poor little guy, I hope he's doing better tonight.
Does it seem weird that having people with breastfeeding challenges and sick babies is fun? I guess I am at the point where I like when everything is normal, but it is sometimes a little boring. It is nice to know you are handling a tough situation just the way it should be and people are more comfortable, safer, whatever because of you. It's not exactly "fun", maybe satisfying is a better word.
PS Not sure I did everything perfectly with respiratory baby, but I did OK and I learned what to do better next time.