Yesterday when I went down into the basement to pull some frozen breastmilk out, I was greeted with a horrible scene. We have a small freezer in the basement where I keep my supply of frozen bmilk, and extra meat. I opened the door and apparently the freezer was overloaded with frost and it wasn't working. Almost my entire frozen breastmilk supply was thawed. There were a few bags that were still frozen, covered under a big chunk of ice that had fallen, but 15-20 bags were cold, but thawed. I was/am devastated. I've actually been trying to increase my frozen supply over the last few weeks, and this just really sucked. I seriously cried. I know that it's not the end of the world, but I had this goal of exclusively breastfeeding Isaiah until 6 months, and then starting solid food. And I never wanted to have to give him formula. But I don't think that going to happen now. I can only pump so much at work, and sometimes its hard to pump at all when it's super busy. That stuff is liquid gold! I'm going to try to pump after he eats each time while I'm off, and I got up and pumped today a couple times. I had husband give him bottles throughout the day to try and use at least some of the breastmilk before it isn't good anymore. I'm feeling better about it today, but yesterday I was crushed.
On top of losing my frozen supply, worked sucked the big one. I spent the first 4 hours in the nursery. Not taking care of the healthy babes or as just an extra set of hands, but taking care of sick babies. I'm a labor nurse, not a nursery nurse. I told them I wasn't really comfortable being completely responsible for the sick babies. There wasn't anything too horribly wrong with them, but it isn't my area of expertise. Luckily, they got another nursery nurse to come in after 4 hours. So I got to go back to labor. Thank you God! But trouble continued. I had a patient that was preterm that thought she was contracting, but after she arrived at the hospital, she said it had stopped. But I still had to call the doc for orders. The dude on call didn't answer his phone. I tried multiple times, called all the numbers we had. No response. Tried the patients regular doc, no answer. Tried the partners. No response. It's a holiday weekend so I'm sure they were out of town. Plus they weren't on call. So, up the chain of command we went, to no avail. I did finally get orders from a doc who doesn't even cover for that group. The on call doc finally called back 3 hours later. Completely unacceptable. What if it had been an emergency!? Anyway, I'm hoping tonight is going to be better.
3 comments:
I cannot even imagine a doc not calling back. Did he say anything like I was in surgery or even worse on the golf course! That's too bad.
When he called back at 1:30 a.m.he said his phone battery died. But at the end of our shift when he came in to round, he said he was separated from his phone, and thats why he didn't call back.
I have had nightmares all along of our freezer going out or the freezer at daycare going out. I'll never forget my panic the morning I got up and found water all around the base of the freezer. (our feezer is in a breezeway and it turned out the sprinklers were turned and hitting one of the windows so it leaked in). My supply was down and therefore the glorious four shelves of milk dwindled down to one. At that point I said I have to do something. So I looked and asked around. I was encouraged to drink beer. Drinking and breastfeeding? Well, I could honestly say that beer makes me gag so no go. But I did take fenugreek for about five days (until I found out that you shouldn't take it if you or the baby has a peanut allergy). I did notice a significant increase by that fifth day in my milk production. So when I had to stop that I asked one of the NPs from my OB office for a regalan rx. Now we have two full shelves and I'm starting the third. I feel a lot better about that. I worry about the what ifs. I know that Jake has absolutely no intention of ever taking formula and I have made peace with that.
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