Every room is full, you empty one room and two patients come in..you know the kind of day...then, a doc calls and tells you that he has a patient that's scheduled for a c-section in three days but she's in labor now...and here's where the real fun begins.
This "laboring" patient (with contractions every 20 min and a thick, closed cervix) arrives with her entire extended family. I ask them to step out while I admit the patient and prepare her for her c-section. A few of them leave but then trickle back in within a few seconds. I ask the patient who her support person will be in the OR-since it's not obvious from the numerous people in the room. She begins naming off people and I stop her at five (she has eight people in the room and so far she's been pointing them out in a clockwise manner) and tell her that for safety and infection control reasons (if not pure lack of space) she can only take one person into the OR with her. She and the entire family now jumps all over me because "the doctor said we can take whoever we want in." I have to politely explain to them that the doctor does not have any say over visitors in the OR-it's a hosptial issue. The CRNA comes in and agrees to allow two people in. Now the entire family is fighting over who will be the second person (would have been easier to limit it to one.) Now, the mother comes out and informs me that she and the husband will be going in, but "we will need a nurse to film it because Aunt Betty was going to but now you won't let her in." I tell her that the nurses in the room have duties related to the surgery that they must fulfill and that they are welcome to take a video camera in but they will have to video tape it. She then says that there is no way they can film because they want to watch so we need an extra nurse to come in. I explain to her that we are very busy today and do not have an extra nurse to go in and again tell her that she is welcome to film it.
OK so they finally go back and we have to virtually physically restrain the family members who continually attempt to "wander" into the OR and refuse to wait in the waiting room-they must be in the hall the entire time.
This whole time I am also the charge nurse and have another labor patient. Every nurse on the floor has a huge patient load. We run around all day long.
So, a half hour before the end of my shift I finally have time to sit down and chart and one of the babies will not stop crying and mom is trying to take a nap and refuses to have the (breastfeeding) baby returned to her room. I am able to soothe the baby a little by holding her. So, I am holding a baby and charting and a visitor walks by and says "what a great job you have, you just get to sit around and hold babies all day.":banghead:
She is LUCKY I didn't rip her face off!!!
OK, go ahead and vent here-we all need it now and then!
what a horrible day! i have to say that i never had more than my child's father in the room with each of my deliveries. except with my second one. i wanted my son's grandmother in the room. i've always just loved her, and in addition to that, she was an rn, so i know i didn't have anything she never saw before. i actually had my kids in the same hospital she worked at, so it was convenient for her to stop by the next day and check in on us and visit our son.
[color=#483d8b]when i had my last baby (i have 3- 2 boys, 1 girl), i actually begged the nurse to please make everyone leave! i was so tired, and it was late, and nobody cared about how i felt, they just wanted to stay forever oogling and touching my daughter. in addition to this, my so's mother showed up (different woman than discussed above) and she was so nasty to me and wouldn't stop running her mouth. i would have paid my nurse to physically pick that hateful, evil woman up and literally toss her out on her rear end!
[color=#483d8b]having a baby is personal, i think. i agree with the "if you weren't there for the conception" thing. kind of like, if you wouldn't be present for a general gyn exam, then you don't need to be there! come visit after mom and baby are cleaned up and rested a bit. i also don't understand how people can want their young children in the room to "watch their baby brother/sister being born". wouldn't that traumatize the child? do many people do this?
[color=#483d8b]i also don't understand how people can want their young children in the room to "watch their baby brother/sister being born". wouldn't that traumatize the child? do many people do this?
it is definitey a personal choice, and my own jury is still out for baby #2, but kids are not as traumatized by it as one might think. some watch wide-eyed with wonder, some are fast asleep, and some are oblivious to the miracle as they color in their coloring book. the key is educating them beforehand what to expect. we live in a pretty sanitized world where there's little if any exposure to birth or death...it wasn't always this way. people (including kids) watched animals give birth replete with all the blood and goo, and back when the majority of women birthed at home, i am sure some siblings of all ages were around to witness it.
i remember when i saw my first birth (nursing school) and wrote and email to everyone i knew about how awestruck i was, what a miracle birth is. my stepfather (born in 1916) replied that i was awfully late in witnessing a birth; he had grown up seeing animals (and a few people) give birth and that yes, it is a miracle.
Many of our labor rooms are kind of small so too many visitors can be a nuisance, but I'm not a stickler for the rules. Birth is an important event to many people, and they have a right to share it with family. I need to be able to do my job, but it isn't the patient's responsibility to make my job a pleasure. So, if there a five family members that include patient's mom, dad, father of baby, sister and grandma, and they're all nice people, I'm inclined to work around them. If it's a patient with her four teenage girlfriends and a couple of boys, I'm more likely to be strict about the number at the bedside.
Although not an OB nurse, I do have a child. I must say that one great quality of living 12 hours away from family--no one fighting to be in the room. It was just my husband, me (duh!), the doc and a nurse.
I've seen plenty of hoo-haws, but I sure wouldn't be too keen on displaying mine for family. Ack.
Specializes in OR, OB, EM, Flight, ICU, PACU.......
As a Labor ane delivery nurse for part of my career (my only claim to fame was being the only male L & D nurse in a state in the middle of the country) I too saw what my OB-GYN called her "Cecil B. Demile " delivery. There was a camera crew (3), the Dad, the Parents and Parents-in-Law, a couple of other family and friends, and to top it off, Grandparents holding the other children up to the window (outside with the curtains pulled back). I kind of lost count as I had patients to care for! Told the Dr. if she did something like that again, I wanted Hollywood rates! Mom and baby were fine. I went home after that one.:nuke:
:uhoh3:LOL... Not at you but because I have totally been there. We have a three person rule for vag deliveries and try hard to enforce that but I'm only once person and these people are standing on the other side of the curtain as if that doesn't really count as being in the room, or they are right outside the door. I have to explain again and again that because of the privacy of the other patients on the floor we cannot have 27 people standing in the hallway for this patient... People are really ridiculous sometimes, same way when we let the dad in the nursery after a c/s and then I turn around and he's letting in 12 other people because they "can't get pictures from the window" uggh... Hello people there are other babies in here...
I'm pretty sure that everyone in the whole hospital where I work thinks we just "sit around and rock babies" I had a two night stretch that I wrote about not too long ago in which I had a patient come in the first night that didn't know she was pregnant and swore she had a period last month deliver a 40 wker within 20 or so minutes of walking in the ER door with a "stomach ache" and then the next night had a relative of one of our nurses come in abrupting and complete at 22 wks deliver for me before I could explain the situation to her ob who was home sleeping of course. on the end of that second night I was sitting there trying to get my charting together and there are 7 screaming babies in the nursery, I walk in and start checking them all and trying to figure out who needs to go to mom now and who just needs a dipey etc, and an aide from the med surg floor walks back and knocks on the nursery door and says "You are so lucky to get to work here because you get to see babies all the time" I wanted to say, you probably would not have thought I was so lucky when I was delivering a stillborn just a few hours before... UGGH.
I'm not OB/GYN but critical care- we have the same problem. Ater a woman walked in and startled her fresh post op CABG husband awake for the 3rd time in 2 hrs- on the vent, multiple drips, bleeding... I explained that that type of visiting is against the poicy -for the umpteenth time. Of course we got the "but I'm his wife- so the rules don't apply to me" argument. I was having a harder and harder time managing to keep him stable with her visits. I then explained that her husband was likely to die if she kept comming in like that and it that was her intention could she please get the information together for the funeral home and bring it to us with her next pop-in visit. We only saw her during visiting hrs after that. Sometimes you have to hit them over the head to get thier attention. I can only guess it's ten times worse in L&D.
I was totally pro family and pro visiting until I did deliveries. I can't tell you how many times I've explained the guidelines, and everything on the blue table is sterile, don't touch, and no new visitors until the placenta is out and the doc has left the room, stay put if there is an emergency with mom or baby so we can get at the equipment and meds...Even the people I thought were going to make a good faith effort to restrain themselves somehow loose their minds when they see that baby, and then anything and everything is up for grabs.
People come in during resuscitations because they can't hear what's going on, they listen through the crack in the door to mom screaming, they push you out of the way so they can get good pics, they complain about the wait when the mom is being stitched up, extra nurses run into the room and they whine that the hospital added more people, after we told THEM there was no room. (*****) They ask you to move the bag and mask so they can see the baby, they run over to hold the baby before mom and dad have a chance, they lie on the floor and complain there are no comfortabke chairs or cots in the hall. Once mom has said who she wants in the room they keep begging until mom says "I don't care" and the nurse gets a triumphant look, while the dad shrugs. (My hospital had no security and no rules, lol)
Then no one seems to get that if mom has spent 12-14 hours in labor she is TIRED. The parade starts, I swear, no exceptions, at 8AM and goes on until 10PM or we kick them out. So mom is trying to breastfeed, on 36 hours awake, and with an audience. If she's really lucky the MIL will be right there making suggestions until the old wives tales and actual information just becomes a blur in her mind.
I never actively hated visitors until I worked OB. ER/ICU visitors can be in the way, but they don't actively interfere (usually), and I loved family coming in to pediatrics and med/surg, even the crazy ones.
OB needs locked doors, and a nasty security guard at every entrance.
:yeahthat: My experiences exactly. Except I just tell them they can't stand in the hall because it is mandated by the state fire marshall. Works like a charm most of the time.
And we have locked doors to the unit and I make use of them during my shifts.
I'll see all of the above and raise you the 4 year old with the snot running down his face, coughing on everyone, whose auntie decides to take him over to the postpartum room(while mom is laboring) and tuck him (filthy clothes, shoes and all) into the other patient bed in that room - and leaves him ALONE in there. This after she has been told repeatedly that she or someone needs to take him home!
Or the guy who shows up at 2 a.m. (closing time) wanting to visit the girl who delivered at 11 and is just now getting some sleep. Claims to be her brother (NOT), and becomes highly verbally abusive when I refuse to let him in. Patient and I had already talked that I would let her sleep and not even put calls through the rest of the night.
I've frequently thought that new OB units should be redesigned like the pictures of the old "operating theaters" from past centuries - with stadium seating!
Our women are only able to have 1 person with them during labour and birth. That rule is very occasionally relaxed to allow 2 people to come along but that has to be arranged prior to 'the event' and in writing with our labour ward co-ordinator. Also, under no circumstances are children allowed in our labour rooms.
Other than birth partners we do not allow anyone to wait in our labour ward. We do have a waiting room but it is for birth partners use only if they want to get a bit of a break for 10 minutes and not for other relatives to wait in.
I always though our rules were a bit strict but reading all your tales makes me kinda glad we have them.
Nidawi
31 Posts
what a horrible day! i have to say that i never had more than my child's father in the room with each of my deliveries. except with my second one. i wanted my son's grandmother in the room. i've always just loved her, and in addition to that, she was an rn, so i know i didn't have anything she never saw before. i actually had my kids in the same hospital she worked at, so it was convenient for her to stop by the next day and check in on us and visit our son.
[color=#483d8b]when i had my last baby (i have 3- 2 boys, 1 girl), i actually begged the nurse to please make everyone leave! i was so tired, and it was late, and nobody cared about how i felt, they just wanted to stay forever oogling and touching my daughter. in addition to this, my so's mother showed up (different woman than discussed above) and she was so nasty to me and wouldn't stop running her mouth. i would have paid my nurse to physically pick that hateful, evil woman up and literally toss her out on her rear end!
[color=#483d8b]having a baby is personal, i think. i agree with the "if you weren't there for the conception" thing. kind of like, if you wouldn't be present for a general gyn exam, then you don't need to be there! come visit after mom and baby are cleaned up and rested a bit. i also don't understand how people can want their young children in the room to "watch their baby brother/sister being born". wouldn't that traumatize the child? do many people do this?