Babies, babies, everywhere

I got my wish this weekend, and it was busy enough I got a few nice deliveries/labors in. Saturday wasn't real busy, but I admitted someone for a labor check at about 5a.m., but she wasn't in labor yet so she went home. She came back in last night, in good labor. She was 41+ weeks, which we don't see too much of because the docs her do quite a few inductions. She didn't really have a great contraction pattern, but she was making change in her cervix. Luckily, the doc on call isn't one to mess with something that works, so I didn't have to start pitocin. We just let her labor, and she was 8 cm when I left this a.m. About 5a.m. this a.m., we had 2 moms come in within 20 minutes of each other, ready to deliver. The first went to the bathroom down in ER, and they had to beg her to come out because she kept saying "I have to poop". Um, lets get you up to L&D to make sure you don't deliver your baby in the toilet. Sure enough, she was complete with the head right there by the time she got to us. She was in great control, doc made it (barely) and she had a beautiful baby boy. Twenty minutes, I'm in my labor patients room, attending to a mild decel. I come out after awhile to find that someone had come in by ambulance and was moaning in the next room. I head in there and another nurse and I assess this girl, multip, 7 cm, water broken, and she had a history of fast labor. Not too much later, she delivers. As this is going on, our morning c-section is waiting to be admitted. Now this might not seem like too much commotion, but there were only 2 of us working labor to start with. Luckily, another labor nurse was able to come from postpartum to help. Our poor scrub tech, who was also the secretary, couldn't keep up with getting things orders, assisting with the deliveries, getting the a.m. section room set up, etc. (A sore spot with us because people who don't work nights seem to think we don't need a secretary AND a scrub tech. It's a bunch of bull) But, we did manage to get the patients taken care of. I also had a nice delivery with a very young mom of 15. Her family was very supportive, and she had been in and out frequently with preterm labor. She manage to get to 37 weeks. She labor and delivered quickly and was very happy to see her baby. Another young mom, 16, was coming in for a c-section due to a breech baby. She also had a very supportive family and the baby's dad was over in Iraq. While both of these moms were very positive about having a baby sooner than they would have planned and were set up with all the resources they would need, you still worry about them. How will they deal with a newborn and all the issues of being a teenager? I just remember how immature I was at that age. But, sometimes these young moms handle the baby better than some moms who are older and married. I just hope these 2 moms do continue on with school and go to college like they both said they would like to do. Good luck to them.

Crap, crap, crap. Work just called and put me on call. Normally, I wouldn't mind, but I missed last Monday night of work because Isaiah was sick, so that's 16 hours I'll be missing this next check. Oh well, I am sick myself, and maybe they'll call me in at some point tonight. That's the bad/good thing about a working in a hospital. If they aren't busy, they flex staffing down to save money. What other jobs are you not guaranteed your hours? While it's nice to get a night off here and there, it also sucks if you want/need those hours.