Postpartum Nurse Blues

I am a registered nurse.  It took a lot of time, ridiculous dedication to studying, brutal clinicals, too many tests, one massive test that pretty much took the life out of me (thanks, NCLEX), and constant prayers that I had done enough.  Finally, everything settled into place and I became a working registered nurse.  Sometimes I wonder why I ever made that decision.

Working on a postpartum floor has so many amazing experiences behind it.  I love seeing the faces of brand new parents holding their baby for the first time.  Helping mothers establish breast feeding is such a bonding experience that I get to be a part of that you feel connected to the mom's and the babies.  Teaching a father to change a baby's diaper for the first time never gets old, especially as their little sons take the opportunity to pee on dad as soon as the diaper comes off. Watching parents handle their baby as if they were terrifed that the baby's tiny little arm was going to fall off the moment they touch them always makes me laugh a little inside.  Seeing a baby chomp on a binky that is the size of their entire face doesn't get any cuter.  Helping get that tiny baby into the car seat for the very first time while parents have no idea how to even buckle the baby in, sure that their baby shrunk ten sizes when compared to the huge carseat is always an adventure.  Holding the camera and taking the first pictures of a completed family for the first time, you can feel the love radiating from that happy new family.  And sending a newly created family unit on their way and out into the world for the first time together always feels like sending a part of your own family out into the world.

People say to me all the time, "Oh, I bet you just love your job.  Spending the whole day with new babies, it doesn't get better than that!  What a happy place to work!"  And they are so right.  It is the best job and most the time is such a happy place to be.  But what most people don't realize is, sometimes I have the worst job.  Sometimes I have days that are so bad that it makes me never want to come back.  Days that when you go home, you have to cry all of your emotions out and struggle to get back into your normal life.

Working on a postpartum floor can have so many terrifying experiences behind it.  Walking into a room with a woman who just started bleeding and going into very early preterm labor and realizing with her that the baby she has been carrying for 20 weeks was coming now and was not going to survive will stop your own heart.  Running to a room where the mother called screaming that her baby isn't breathing and walking in to see a baby whose face is completely gray and is getting worse by the second will haunt you forever.  Helping a postpartum mom up to the bathroom after delivery and having her loose so much blood that she passes out on the toilet, requiring three extra nurses to help carry her back to bed all while trying to keep the mother conscious isn't my ideal kind of work day.  Checking to see how much a postpartum mother is bleeding and realizing that she is bleeding more and more as you push out blood clots the size of your arm and realizing she isn't going to stop bleeding until you do something quick will keep you terrified everytime you hear the word "hemorrhage".  Being the person to tell new parents that instead of bringing their baby back from the nursery to feed, their baby was rushed to the ICU because he or she stopped breathing and now requires oxygen in order to breath proficiently makes you feel like the worst person they've met.  And crying with a mother who just spent 12 hours in labor delivering a baby that made it to near full term but for some unsatifyingly unexplainable reason had to delivery a baby that had already passed away will make your heart sob every time you walk past that room for the rest of your career.

It feels as though these harder days have been the definition of my career as a nurse lately.  As a nurse, I'm so much more emotionally involved with my patients than I was as a CNA.  So when the hard times happen for me, it takes even longer to bounce back.  Every situation listed above has happened to me in my short first year as an RN.  Being a nurse makes you an emotional punching bag at times.

Sometimes there are days that you wonder why you ever signed up for this, but in reality, I wouldn't trade my job for the world.  I would go through every experience I've had again and again and be happy with the same outcome, the same decisions, the same career.  Those emotional moments may be hard to handle at times, but being the person there to comfort a total stranger during times of extreme heartbreak makes an instant lifelong friend.  Sometimes I wonder if patients realize how much their nurses think of them and remember them.  I wonder if they know how much they impact my everyday life.  Choosing to be a nurse may have been one of the craziest decisions I ever made, but most definitely, it's been one of the best. 

So next time you're a patient have a nurse that seems a little frazzled, maybe even a little distant or upset, try giving him or her a pass, try to remember that not all days as nurse are peaches and cream.  Being a patient in the hospital can be emotional and hard, but so can days being the nurse in that same hospital.