paintedbison

I was looking at the requirements to get licensed in another state. The application asked if you passed or failed nclex and what was the score. I thought the nclex was pass/fail only? Have they changed it? I took it in 2004.

I moved about a year ago, but before that I was working as a "traditional" postpartum nurse. I liked it for the most part (although I do not think it is an ideal set up). However, it would get annoying because of the overlap of jobs. For instance, the nursery nurses weren't always good about coming out to check on babies. I was on the floor and accessible. So, I was generally the one to help with breastfeeding issues and even standard newborn care questions. I could call nursery to come help, but it was generally easier to just do it myself rather than make the family wait forever. I would have preferred fewer patients and just taking care of the babies too. I do like the mom side of care much better than the baby side, though. So, in that sense, I enjoyed the job.

I worked until 39 weeks with both pregnancies. I was full time the first time around and part time the second time around. The worst part was the feet swelling. I had the worst pitting edema of anyone I have EVER seen. 12 hour shifts on your feet are rough at the end... but it was totally worth it for the time off after the baby came.

I don't know... as an ob nurse and someone pregnant with my third baby... I don't plan on using a bedpan or getting a catheter at 5cm. I would get up and walk to the bathroom. So, after the repositioning, the baby came super fast. What would have been better? Not allowing her to move much and keeping her in the bed so she could remain stuck at 5cm and eventually get a section?

This is at a hospital a friend of mine works at. She said the nurse manager in L&D says you can't refuse an iv access in labor. She said you can refuse the fluids, but not the iv access. Is their any truth to this whatsoever? I don't see how this can possibly be legally correct...

Sounds good to me. Rating pain in labor is kind of a weird idea to me anyways. Like, usually if someone is hurting at a ten, you should definitely be trying to alleviate pain. But, not everyone hurting at a ten in labor wants pain meds...

Yep... it's not that they are only producing colostrum. It's how quickly the general anesthesia metabolizes out of the body.

You can enter midwifery either from becoming an RN... then applying to a masters level certified nurse midwife program. Or, you can become a lay midwife (CPM). These are people with no medical background... they usually apprentice with another CPM to learn the trade. So, you can become a CPM without being a nurse. Another option if you don't want to go the nursing route but want to get into the ob field is to look at being a doula. They function as a labor support person to the mother.

My understanding is that it is safe to breastfeed immediately after general anesthesia as soon as mom is coherent enough to hold the baby.

That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Too bad the patient can't be told to just no show for her section... wait until she goes into labor... she can experience it. Then she can show up and get her section. I'd like to go to this doctor and tell him I'd like to experience being high. Maybe he could put me in the hospital and dope me up real good on fentanyl or something.

Just curious. One of the hospitals here mandates strict bedrest (not even up to the bathroom) after ROM. Is this a common practice?

I'm assuming from what I heard that day that the head stayed about -2 and she was fully dilated for a couple of hours. I don't remember there being lots of molding.

I'm a postpartum nurse and have a question about my friend's delivery over three years ago (it's been bothering me this whole time). I was working on the unit (cross training, fresh out of school) the day she had her baby. She was electively induced and got an epidural early on. Dilated to ten pretty quickly. The nurse said she could feel the baby's head coming down and then going back up. Said the baby wouldn't fit through her pelvic bones. Never attempted to have her push at all. They knew the baby was big per ultrasound. She had a c/sec at 5pm and delivered a nine lb baby. I'm just wondering if she had been asked to push if it would have made any difference? Or if she hadn't had the epidural and could have squatted or something else for pushing? Or does what happened sound right to you?

I'm a postpartum nurse and I have two kids. With my first, I had a labor nurse who had never had children. (I called and asked who all was working and picked her, lol.) She was great... I totally give her the credit that I was able to have a natural delivery in a hospital setting. You may get some comments from people but don't let that get you down. You don't have to have kids to be a good labor nurse. You are right... every labor is so different that personal experience doesn't really help that much. What felt good to me in labor won't feel good to you. How I felt contractions won't be the same way you experience them. In some ways, I was a much better nurse before I had kids. I was more understanding of patients because I didn't really know how bad things hurt. Now, I'm more like "oh please... you had a lady partsl delivery two days ago... quit whining for pain meds". So, personal experience certainly didn't make me more understanding, lol!

I had my last baby at the hospital I worked at, and it was really a good experience overall. I did not want an epidural, so I asked for the nurse who I knew was best with unmed labors. However, I am pregnant again and now working at a different hospital after a move. I will not be having this baby at the hospital I work at. It is a smaller hospital, and they are not very friendly with breastfeeding at all. They keep babies in the nursery way too long, in my opinion, and force formula on moms constantly. It's sad. I don't want to deal with arguing against that. There are also more coworkers here that I don't get along with... I would hate to have someone taking care of me that I know and don't like. This baby will be born at a birthing center with a midwife. I had to argue with insurance to get the birthing center covered. You'd be surprised at how far an hour of phone calls might get you. I think the HIPPA thing is a great idea for arguing to have another hospital covered. I'm all for using a midwife for a home birth. I've actually been really surprised at how many people I work with think that me delivering in a birthing center is great. I expected people to be totally appalled by it. A lot have told me they wished they had done the same thing.

How long do you recommend for vag deliveries and c/sections not to drive? When I started pp, someone told me 2 days for vag and 2 weeks for sections. I've been telling people that ever since, and now I've been told it should be two weeks for vag and three for sections. Just curious.

I think you may be very right in your assessment of them not wanting you there because you didn't fit well with the clique. I've seen it before. Would there be any other options of working with a different group of people in OB? Such as post partum or nursery or NICU? I would definitely not be discouraged from working l&d in the future. Sounds like you just need to find a different place to do it. Sounds pretty crappy all the way around. Glad to hear you are enjoying where you are now!

Yep. I had a patient who was a surrogate for her son and daughter in law. Seemed like all involved were happy. I also had a mom who said she had a baby so she could give it to her sister (but it was her's biologically). That one was weird.

I have been getting more and more fed up with the hospital I currently work at. We recently moved to a new floor. It is a smaller hospital, and they used to only staff one nurse on post partum. When we moved to a new floor they made a new rule that two people must be on post partum at all times because the floor is so far from l&d or nursery... there is no one to even hear if an emergency light is pulled. On Christmas Day, they pulled my aide to l&d because they were really busy. I was alone with five patients. Am I unrealistic to think that there should always be two people on the floor for safety issues? I am at the point of quitting over this and some other issues. I am pregnant, and having no one to relieve me to even get a lunch break in 8-12 hours seems unrealistic to me. Any advice?

I work in a small community hospital about 1 -1.5 hrs from downtown houston. I started there about six months ago. Before that I worked in a much larger hospital in a different city (relocated for hubby's job). I am really frustrated where I am at now. I work on post partum and it is very unfriendly towards breastfeeding and seems behind the times to me. I can also be floated to any floor in the hospital if the census is low. And, we get med-surg overflow on our floor all the time. I would really like to work somewhere that I can just be an OB nurse and not have to deal with med-surg patients. I got an email out of the blue from Methodist downtown, and I don't know whether to pursue it or not. I am really unhappy where I am at, but I haven't been there that long, so I don't know if I need to just give it more time.... or if I should just go ahead and quit. I also don't know if it would be worth driving an hour more to work. (I just want to work part-time... so I wouldn't have to drive it everyday.) The last thing I want to do is quit where I am at... get a job over an hour away, and then realize things aren't much better downtown and be stuck with the way long commute and outrageous gas bills. If I quit where I am, I would NOT ever consider going back. So I would have basically burnt a bridge with the closest hospital to where I live. Sorry so long.... Any advice????

I live in Tomball, which is right by The Woodlands, and so far I have liked it pretty well. We actually go to The Woodlands to eat out and stuff sometimes b/c there is a lot more to do their than in Tomball. We moved here about six months ago and the heat/humidity is a killer. It seriously fills like you are living in a sauna. Don't plan on spending much time outdoors in the summer... unless it is in the pool. It will also take you a while to commute to downtown Houston from The Woodlands if you want to work there. However, there are a couple of hospitals in the woodlands that might be decent to work at. I am too new to the area to really know yet. Wouldn't recommend Tomball Regional necessarily... part of the reason I found these message boards was to try to get some info on some other area hospitals.