tuppence

Gosh, I don't even know if my midwives or any of my nurses have had children, except for one nurse who shared that informtion with me. I'm positive that the male perinatologist who delivered my son has never given birth.

At my school, A&P is taken first, or the second semester of it is taken concurrently with Nutrition. And Nutrition wasn't an easy class by any means. I would think A&P would be hard to do as a summer class, but my professors say people seem to do just as well in the summer as during the year. And I've known students who have done it, and they say it is do-able. Good luck!

Thanks. :) All of this is really interesting to me. I just registered today for my first semester of nursing classes, for this fall. I find labor and delivery, women's health, etc., especially interesting, and can't wait to learn more.

I had forgotten about this old thread until I started getting e-mail alerts of replies! The baby in question is a healthy, beautiful 9-month-old now. :) They may have given me antibiotics towards the end, although I don't remember anyone saying they were. I haven't looked at the records. But, I didn't have an I.V. until we decided on the epidural and pit, so if I did get any antibiotics it wouldn't have been until then, over 40 hours after my water broke. I was GBS negative.

Yes, it has, it is very interesting.

And thanks for all the congratulations, and for the information. :)

This is really interesting. The theory of the head plugging it makes sense to me. The first gush was when I was lying down taking a nap. After that, the biggest amounts were when I would move suddenly to a different position. The gush that soaked the maxi pad, a couple hours after it started, was when I was sitting in a chair and suddenly moved to sit differently. Later, once contractions started, I would have a little leak with a contraction. I did notice that afterwards, when she moved, it felt different than before. I don't think I was imagining it. Is it possible to feel a difference like that? Well, luckily it worked out ok. It was a little scary when I started running a fever, though - I think that is when they started to worry that I was right about my water breaking. Once I started running a fever, my midwife started me on pitocin, but that was Thursday morning and my water broke around Tuesday noon (says me). I wonder if they would have been quicker to start augmenting with pitocin if they had realized my water really had broken in the first place. Or, maybe it's best that my labor got a chance to start on its own, especially since I was VBAC. Oh well, I'm just Monday morning quarterbacking. :chuckle

Thanks! That was really informative!

What exactly do you do when a woman comes in with possible rupture of membranes? I assume you leave them to let any amniotic fluid pool for a while, then check with a speculum and then do either a ferning or nitrazine test, right? But, what position do you leave the patient to let the amniotic fluid pool? Lying down, or sort of sitting up, or what? I hope I didn't get any terminology wrong. :) I'm a pre-nursing student, and I'm really interested in L&D, plus I had my second baby last month. So that makes me curious to learn about things surrounding my birth. First let me say that my baby and I are fine, no big complications, and I was able to have the VBAC I wanted, so overall, I'm happy about the outcome. I'm kind of curious whether my experience was typical. I called my midwife to say I was having some fluid leaking, and she had me go in to the hospital that evening. I had experienced several small gushes of fluid, the largest one being enough to soak a maxi pad all at once. I relayed this information to my nurse. She put me in a sort of half-sitting position with my knees up, and said it was a "pooling position" (??) well, as I waited, I could feel fluid coming out and going onto the pad underneath me. She ended up doing a slide and looking for ferning, and came back and said it wasn't amniotic fluid, just cervical mucus. I questioned her about the amount, and about the fluid on the pad on the bed, but she stated that you can get a lot of cervical mucus at the end of pregnancy, but that I would know when my water had broken because it would be watery like urine. I stated that the fluid I had observed *was* watery like urine, and she told me that as mucus leaves the body, my body heat warms it up so that it *seems* watery, but in fact it is *not* watery. OK, I use FAM, so I'm pretty familiar with my mucus, LOL, but whatever. I was sent home. Long story short, I continued to leak watery fluid in small intermittent gushes, I started having contractions that night, and about 48 hours after I believed my water broke, my daughter was born. Meanwhile, my nurses kept asking me if I had had a BIG gush of fluid, because they were wondering if my water had broken yet. Eventually it became apparent that my water had broken at some point. There never was a BIG gush, even when it was time to put on the internal monitor, or later when the baby was born. Oh well. But I wonder if the reason the ferning test was wrong was because the amniotic fluid leaked out onto the pad and so all she got on the slide was mucus. Is that the usual position to put a patient in? I guess I would have thought lying down would be the way to do it, but what do I know. :) Any other comments on the situation? I'm mostly looking to learn, and why not use my own birth experience to learn, right?

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that it was true everywhere, just in my area. I'm glad things are easier elsewhere!

The public university here is a lot more competitive to get into than the private schools. But the private schools are flooded, too. It's at the point where if you are transferring from another school, you can forget about the private schools, because they have more than enough students applying who have been there since they started, and those students get priority. And if you don't have stellar grades, you can forget about the public university. There aren't any programs here that are easy to get into.

I didn't see the Pioneer Press article. I'm interested in the answer to your question, too! (I'm in the Cities and graduating in 3 years.) The last I heard was when the Strib and one or two news stations were doing stories last month on the people lined up for three nights outside Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and they were saying there was a shortage and it was projected to get worse over the next few years.

Oh boy, who's claiming that? My *32*-weeker stayed longer than that, so I'd find it hard to believe.

I'm Erin, 25, I live in Minnesota and I'm the mom of a 2 1/2 year old boy and a newborn girl (born July 15). I took most of my pre-req's last year, but have a couple more to do this year. I've already been guaranteed admission to the nursing program for Fall 2005, so I'll be graduating in 2007. This fall I'll be taking Nutrition and Ethics. I was lucky enough to get them scheduled back-to-back, three days a week, so I won't have to be away from home much. I have a previous degree in French and will be earning a second major/post-bacc certificate at a four-year college.

Thank you. I had originally asked that the catheter be placed after I got the spinal, but the nurse came back later and said that the doctor wanted it done beforehand because he wanted things to go as quickly as possible once I was ready for the cesarean. I don't know how usual that is, but I agreed to it. I had severe pre-eclampsia at 32 weeks and once the perinatologist checked us out, he seemed to want to do the cesarean ASAP, though we waited a few hours because I had had some toast that morning at the hospital I was transferred from. I gather it was a fairly serious situation. I was a little confused from the mag and everything, but low fluid, the placenta not looking good, and the baby's heart rate not going up were mentioned. Anyway, the discomfort of having a student insert a foley was the least of my worries, really, though it makes for a good "war story." (The 32-weeker is 2 1/2 now and doing just fine.)

Gosh, when I had my son a couple of years ago, I let a student nurse insert my foley catheter BEFORE I got my spinal. It took her four tries -- ouch! Oh, well, I'm having another baby any day now (due today) and I'll still let students practice on me. I'll be starting my nursing classes in a year, and I'll be practicing on people too... turnabout is fair play. :)

I'm Erin, 25, married 4 years in August, and with a previous BA in French. I originally planned to be a teacher but changed my mind after a hospitalization. I just finished up a year of pre-req's. I had applied to start my nursing classes this fall, but because of the number of applicants, I've been offered a spot for 2005 instead. It's probably for the best, since our baby girl is due in about a month! :) (My husband and I also have a 2 1/2 year old son.) I only have a couple more non-nursing classes to take. I'm going to be in a BSN program, but since I already have a bachelor's I'm not taking any general ed stuff, and I'll be earning a second major in nursing. So I'm about to start my second year of pre-req's, but thankfully I know I have a spot reserved in the fall 2005 class. I'll be taking ethics and nutrition this fall.

As others have said, it's just a screening test, and tells whether there is an increased likelihood of the baby having Down syndrome -- it doesn't by any means mean that the baby for sure has it. Did they give her any numbers on what the risk was? Here's my experience, FWIW. With my first pregnancy, the doctor told me that based on my numbers, there was a 1 in 113 (I think that was the number) chance that the baby had Down syndrome. I remember how scary it is, wondering and waiting. In my case, I went in for a Level II ultrasound, and not only were no markers for Down's found, but they found the real reason for the low AFP levels: my son was a couple of weeks younger than we had thought based on my LMP. I had just ovulated late (which explains the surprise conception, too :chuckle). With my new due date, my numbers were within the normal range. He was born at 32 weeks, which is a whole different story, but he is now a totally healthy and typical 2 year old. I hope everything works out for your daughter and grandchild.

Well, a combination of factors. I mean, I have a family, so any career that won't give me a stable job with benefits and a certain amount of money is right out. But that's not my whole reason. I started to think about going into nursing when I had my son at 32 weeks gestation, 2 1/2 years ago. I was hospitalized for a week and he was hospitalized for almost four weeks. It was that experience that made me see what an important job nurses do, and made me want to help others in the same way. That might sound like a BS answer, but it's not. Also, my first job out of college involved sitting at a desk all day, and I know I neeeeeeever want to do that again. And, I'm pretty good at science, and at working with people. And I don't get grossed out easily. It all just seems right.

Um, yeeeeessssss... I know that. In my anatomy class, though, we were supposed to call it the "vestibulocochlear" nerve. Which is why I said see the "if"?

Do you want a dirty one or a clean one?