Babies, Babies. Babies!

It was one of those nights - every time we turned around, we had another baby! Four vaginal deliveries and 1 c-section in 4 hours! I know that doesn't sound so crazy for a big, busy hospital, but when you have 3 labor nurses, including me and I was in charge, it gets a bit busy! We had a delivery right as we came on shift, which was nice. I admitted another primip for labor, and she had a cervix that just had that quick labor feel - you other labor nurses know what I mean. It was paper thin, super stretchy, baby was low and she was ruptured. She wouldn't labor long. I knew we would most likely have 3 deliveries all about the same time because the other 3 labor patients were all primips and all 5-6 cm, and same doc, which made things easy. One of the 3 was ready to deliver at the same time as one of the others - the doc, scrub tech and baby care nurse went in while she delivered, then scrubbed and went to the second delivery. Deliveries 2 and 3 of the night - only 13 minutes apart! After delivery #3, one patient was taken back to the OR - she had been laboring, ruptured, on pitocin for 40 hours and was only dilated 5 cm, and had been for several hours. So finally, she was able to hold her baby in her arms after a long, long try at labor. While that patient was being wheeled into the recovery room, my patient was complete and started pushing. She only pushed for about 20 minutes, which is awesome for a first time mom, and we had a beautiful delivery about 4 hours after we came on at 7pm! Of course, we had outpatients coming in all during the night for hydration, labor checks, decreased fetal movement, plus we had a couple inductions. Even though we were hopping from the time we clocked in to the time we clocked out, it was fun. It was a nice change from the painfully boring, slow weekend shifts we've had recently. Somehow, not sure how I managed it, but I was able to keep tabs on what was going on with every labor patient, with post-partum, nursery and pediatrics. I guess I'm getting used to being in charge AND being a labor nurse. I shouldn't say that too loud, or they'll keep scheduling me in charge!