My husband won't let me do bed baths

[HeartsOpenWide]

I told my husband that we are doing bed baths in lab on Friday. He looked at me strange and asked me why on earth I would want to do that. I told him that it is just something you do as a nurse. He looked at me weird and I told him we would be in shorts and a tank top. He said "Your not letting some guy practice on you!" I told him that it was a medical professional think and that it was not like the male student would be turned on or something. He said that the guy could and that no guy was giving me a sponge bath. I asked, "what if I was in an accident and in the hospital and they had to give me a bath?" and he said "I would give you a bath":madface: Has any one hand any problems with this? I better not tell him that eventually we will be learning to do cathaters...on males...

[KyPinkRN]

Okay, here is maybe the problem... from a guy's perspective. He is being inappropriately jealous & insecure. He is probably thinking about your male classmates rather than whenever you will be taking care of male patients in the future.

Now, from another nurses perspective... tell him not to be insecure about a classroom assignment, period! No need to lie, bend the truth, or whatever. The sooner he gets the facts straight in his brain housing group, then the sooner his inappropriate insecurity & jealousy will pass, too. *Hopefully*

JMHO

I agree... to lie to your husband or even not tell him the whole truth about what is going on in your class will only perpetuate the jealousy and insecurities he has AND he may eventually find out anyway which will lead to trust issues; in turn undoing your marriage. Think about it if your husband is this jealous and insecure over an assignment how understanding will he be if he finds out you lied to him about it. Talk to him about exactly what you have to do, tell him that giving baths is an important part of being a nurse and that to be sucessful in school you must do this. If he still doesn't believe there is nothing sexual about it, then you have bigger problems than seeing other men naked!

[JaxiaKiley]

Anyone who thinks they can keep me from doing something is crazy! I'd tell him exactly what he could do with his ideas!

(But maybe that's why I'm not married )

[LydiaNN]

Anyone who thinks they can keep me from doing something is crazy! I'd tell him exactly what he could do with his ideas!

(But maybe that's why I'm not married )

I feel the same way, but I've been married for 17 years. It is funny because everyone once in a while, it seems like he ''forgets'' who he's married to and says things that make me scoff.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Made me think of the other day when i was talking to Matt about my hospital's enforcement of a stupid (non-safe) rule, and he said "well did you tell them what you though of it?" I looked at him with one eyebrow raised and he said "lol yeah, sorry, forgot who i was talking to lol".

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

Just thought you would like to know that last week when we did the bed baths the teacher asked for a volunteer to let her demonstrate on. She stood there for almost a full min with no one jumping up. So I said, "I'll do it." So instead of not letting a guy give me a bath, I took a bath in front of the whole class! It was fun, I even got a back rub out of it. It was totally fine, no one saw anything. I even got to show how to get on and off a bed pan (but I did not give a full demonstration with a full BM and void...:roll ...just plain demonstration)

[blueberry21]

Just curious........Have you mentioned to your DH the nurse's role when it comes to fecal impaction?

[MarySunshine]

Let's give this guy the benefit of the doubt...maybe he just has a problem with a healthy, young, NON-PATIENT/NON-NURSE getting to touch his wife when it could just as easily be a female instead. I still totally disagree with him, but that might be the only issue he has...we're assigning A LOT of bad traits to him in this thread so far.

[mandeeh]

I am in school right now, and we didn't even have to give bed baths to mannequins. The first bath I gave was to an elderly patient in the nursing home and it was actually a shower. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable with a fellow student of any gender giving me a bed bath! We are friends and classmates, the nurse/patient relationship is different. I really hope that I don't have to get that intimate with any of my classmates! My classmates have and I have no interest in knowing anything quite that personal about each other.

[Jamesdotter]

Regarding bathing each other in class: what I remember of the experience was how COLD it was. The person who mentioned getting the patient's perspective had it right--I always remembered that and tried to do baths fast, warm and as covered as possible. OMG--that was almost 50 years ago!

[BlueEyedRN]

I'm confused about all the responses to this post. When did the OP say that her husband had a problem with her giving bed baths? From what I read of her posts, he had a problem with her possibly getting a bed bath from a male student. So when did he become an insecure sexist control freak who won't let her be a nurse? I tell my husband he can't do stuff all the time and he tells me as well. It's not a big deal. It's setting boundaries and understanding what the other is and is not comfortable with. It's marriage. My husband probably wouldn't be crazy about some guy giving me a bed bath either. He's protective of his wife and I would be more upset if it didn't bother him at all.

I was really surprised when I read through this post. It's mean! A nursing career really can put a strain on marriage, especially during nursing school. I don't think the best advice here is to tell him where to stick it. What needs to happen is some serious respectful communication about this profession and helping him be comfortable with his wife's new and unfamiliar life. And for this situation, what would it hurt to say, okay, I'll pair up with a girl since I can see this bothers you. Look at it from his perspective. I'd be confused and upset if my husband came home one day and said that the people in his office were going to strip down to shorts and a tank top and bathe each other, especially since I know that he's hot and some of the girls there are hot. This is not something that he should get used to. It's just weird.

[Deliasgone]

Kind of off-topic, but I still wonder why the nursing school does it like this. Ours did it too, and we were just embarrassed to be in shorts and washing each other's cellulite. But seriously, I wondered why we couldn't have just done mannekins? If it was to have real person practice, then without doing the really embarrassing parts (which we didn't- thankfully!!), what new thing did anyone learn? Who on earth hasn't washed someone's back or helped a grandma put cream on her legs, or some such other related experience? What the heck did we learn from each other in shorts that we couldn't have learned on a mannekin? Seemed a silly exercise to me and about as fun and arousing as receiving an enema...but back to husband issue...best that you help him get a better idea of what nursing is all about-SOON. You won't want to be having these kinds of battles over every new skill or real life experience in nursing clinicals!

We worked on mannequins at my school and I wish we had worked on real people. Giving your first real live bed bath, pt xfer, etc is nothing like a plastic dummy!

[atrice, BSN, RN]

My husband laughed at me when I told him we were doing bed baths on one another in lab. It's practice and allows you to feel partial empathy for the patient. It's not like the client, even being sick and incapacitated, does not have feelings and insecurities about the whole bed bath thing.