How do you handle tough situations?

[Nursingstudent93]

Hi, I am currently a pre nursing student and one of my goals is to become a L&D nurse. I wanted to know how you handle tough situations, such as losing a baby or something of that nature. I know everyone (hopefully!) goes into this field with a big heart so I am sure its painful to handle something like this. Especially being a mother, I dont know how I would handle telling parents that they lost their baby or the father that the mother died in child birth, etc...I absolutely love working with babies/pregnancy and I know this is what I wanna do, I just dont know how I would go about handling that!

[Nursingstudent93]

Oh, also, my aunt worked in L&D for a short period of time. She worked in a crappy area where many of the mothers were drug addicts and didnt want to be near their baby, the baby was born drug addicted, etc...Its so heartbreaking and Im sure you have to have tough skin to deal with this

[nohika]

I'm not an OB/L&D nurse but volunteered in postpartum. For one, you likely wouldn't be the one delivering the bad news - that's the job of the doctor, not you. :)

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

It's not the nurses job to tell the dad his wife died or the mother that her baby died; the doctor should do this, and most of the time they don't need to wait to be told, they know.

The first time is always the hardest (loosing a baby), and not that it gets "easier", but you learn how to handle it. If you work on a good unit your charge nurse will assign nurses who work better in situations of fetal demise. I am really good about keeping my composer and not totally loosing it, however,I am currently pregnant and my coworkers have been really good when I requested not to be the nurse on a recent fetal demise.

Some once asked me, "what do you do if you cry in front of the parents?" My reply: "what if you don't?" It's always ok to give the patient a long hug and let them see your wet eyes.