Sleep Deprivation Training (too tired to calculate gestation)

Hey everyone.

I think I'm dying.

Like seriously I feel like death.

Death that is really really tired.

I'm not sick. I don't have a cold, a sore throat, or any symptoms of being ill.

I'm just dying.

My last week as been non-stop craziness. Mostly just with work. Well really only just with work and than my crazy hormonal emotions on top of that. Before I go anything further I would like to say I have not been crazy hormonal in this pregnancy at all. I'm not a crazy hormonal person. I don't have crazy mood swings like a lot of women do. And I'm not just saying this to "toot" my on horn. You can ask Eric. If I'm pissed off it's because I genuinely have a reason to be. I don't just jump down peoples' throats for the hell of it and I don't get all "silent treatment-y" because I feel like it. The one sort of hormonal thing that I think freaks Eric out is animals. I have a tendency to cry in pet stores (the ones that actually sell pets) or cry when there are ads about animal rights. He's more or less accepted this and quite often when I feel too emotional to go into a pet store (likes yesterday) he'll go in for me and "check-in" to make sure that all of the animals are okay. Okay, so maybe I am hormonal, but not the crazy psychotic woman hormonal - which I hope NEVER to be.

Anyway, back to work. For those of you who have facebook, I updated my status several times this week about making it through my killer 4 night shifts (at 12 hours each) and even before the night shift madness begun I had an eight (which was extended to 9) hour shift to get the ball rolling. So I did some stupid amount of hours in a 5 day span that mostly were between the hours of 1930-0730. Normally that would be okay. 4 night shifts.. no problem. WELL that is before Eric and I got the great idea of me growing a baby. Which by all definitions of the word parasite, is really technically a parasite. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE our little parasite. But it is a parasite. So shift one was fine until the last 10 minutes of my shift. When my natural childbirth patient who had been 4 cm dilated (you want to get to 10cm) decided to get grunty. She was re-examined and was found to be 10cm. The baby was having pretty decent decelerations in the heart rate so the doctor slapped a vacuum on the baby's head and out came baby. Literally a minute before I was supposed to leave to go home. Thank goodness I could give my report off within 10 minutes and would just need to catch up on all of the charting involved with having a baby (which there is A LOT) so sat at the desk and started charting. That was until they decided to call a code 333 (Obstetrical Emergency - aka Emergency C-section - aka Splash n' Slash). That was fine. I volunteered to stay at the desk and man the desk while I finished my charting. Really the baby would be out in 5 minutes and things would resume to normal. NOPE. Next a patient rings, she's a breech 25-weeker who has been contracting for sometime and rings to say she thinks she broke her water. Go into the room, pull back the sheets and there are handfuls and handfuls of clots. Sooo I ring out for her "real" nurse and say "I think there may be an issue" needless to say that baby delivered within the 5 minutes it took them to deliver the baby in the OR - the difference? One had doctors and the NICU team, one had every other Labour and Delivery nurse who wasn't in the C-section present. Luckily with the skill and talent of one of our nurses that baby was delivered (full on breech) and ran down the hallway by another nurse to the NICU. Needless to say I knew the next 4 shifts could possibly kill me when the first shift started off like that. Within an hour that night we had 4 babies delivered and although I left around midnight I really don't think it slowed down much....

I find it hard to tell stories about nursing because they are such interesting (and sometimes gory) stories that I have to limit the content that I am letting the world in on because of confidentiality laws. So there are so many more details that would paint such a better picture of that night, but I have a fear of stepping out of bounds and losing my license.

So Nights 1, 2 and 4 were absolutely crazy. I'm pretty sure Night 3 was crazy too, I remember having an awesome natural childbirth delivery. The couple was such an amazing team and they had a BEAUTIFUL baby. But besides that - it's really all a blur. Night 2 was really hard beause a 24 weeker came in with bulging membranes and wanted a termination. That was difficult to swallow because just the day before I made 24 weeks and looked at it has a HUGE milestone. It meant my baby can live. She wanted to terminate while she "still could" because she did want a preemie baby. And to be honest, I DO understand what she's saying. I really really do and I'm not going to judge her for saying it or give her anything but the best nursing care that I can, BUT I am just so grateful to be at the point were my baby could live - two polar views.

March has been our busiest month by far. In January and February they were canceling nurses, this month (and I'm full time) I've been called to come in on ALMOST everyone of my days off if only for a 4 hour shift. It's all of the "summer-loving" babies as well as the people who took 6-8 months to get pregnant and decided to "start trying" in January. Also the people who know they're super fertile and wanted a spring baby. And don't forget about the oopses.

I want to establish I am not just whining, really I'm not. I LOVE night shifts. They're my favourite. BUT 4 in a row is rough on the body AND our next door neighbour (aka the people we share a wall with) are building a new deck. So bang bang bang and SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssssssssss (saw sound) and more bang bang bang. So I was averaging 5.5 hours of sleep before my lovely 12 hour shifts. Which are all over with (for now).

Anyway, thanks for listening to me vent. I didn't really tell you much about baby. He/she is moving around TONS and you know those sappy movies where one person puts their hand on one side of a glass window and the other person puts there hand "on top of" that persons hand. Well I think baby and I were doing that but through uterus, and fat and skin instead of a glass window. I would poke baby and he or she would poke back. It was really endearing. Minus that it was happening at 430am when I would have liked to be asleep. Oh well. Like the title says I'm in sleep deprivation training. I will (at some point in time) post more pictures of my growing belly. Which is looking less like mine day by day. I still am impressed that when I step on the scale I'm not seeing some huge number that I'm not used to. Assuming a stick to a pound a week until a deliver I'll end up somewhere around/under 150lbs. But there are still 15 weeks left.. anything is possible! AHH only 15 weeks. Better get back to preparing....

Thanks all for reading!!

Take care,
Beth