July 8, 2011

Behind the nurses station on the night shift

What do L&D nurses do when the unit is (dare I even utter the word) slow? Well, we come up with ways to entertain ourselves, like fashioning stylish outfits from hospital supplies. For holding the monitors on pregnant bellies, we either use belts or these beige girdle things that come in a huge roll. It's elastic fabric that they step into and pull up over their stomach. The scrub techs measure them and cut out appropriate sized girdles from the massive roll. Most people actually like them better than the belts, as do the nurses because they tend to hold the monitors in place better for when a patient is shifting around in bed, they can be held at a tilt with a wash rag over it, and some moms just like the support. Others hate them. One night, I decided that these girdles would make a beautiful mini skirt and tube top. So I donned them over my scrubs. It was a good look. The next night I came in, I found a long "evening gown" in my mailbox. So, like any good model, I tried it on, and then we accessorized it. A pair of white mesh underwear became a lace belt around my waist. In order for me to walk, we had to cut a slit up the side, up to the mid-thigh, which was very sexy given the blue scrubs I was wearing underneath. We thought the orange peripads would look great around the bottom, but decided against wasting too much in the way of supplies. So we used a few of the gold hearts that hold the temp probes on the babies - it added a bit of bling. A necklace could be fashioned out of IV tubing with blood tubes taped to it. And for the perfect shoes? Why those brown hospital socks with the treads on the bottom, of course! If we were going to go all out, we thought we could stain some areas with betadine for a patterned dress. The perfect purse, no doubt, would be that high-style foley bag. Most of the "details" we didn't actually add...we didn't want to waste much in the way of hospital supplies, but 2 pairs of underwear and about 6 gold hearts were used. Our style show lasted all of 15 minutes before we had to get back to work. Here's a picture of just the "gown", before we put a slit in the side and added our flare to it. It's lovely. I'm sure you're all jealous.

2 comments:

AtYourCervix said...

Did you know that you can make bunny ears out of disposable panties, peripads, and suture? Yeah. Go ahead. Try it :-)

trooppetrie said...

I so hope you walked in and showed this to the laboring moms. I would love it if my nurse did this