Amlynn

Thank you all so very, very much. I'm still getting my sea legs and your responses were excellent and very helpful! This is my first post here on the boards and I'm happily looking forwards to coming here to search for info and to ask questions during my schooling. Great site!

Hello! I just started nursing school this past semester, so I'm still a baby at many, many things. My question comes from a personal experience I had yesterday. I am due to have a baby any day now, and I just recently spent the last two days in hospital being monitored for Preeclampsia (yuck!). Everything turned out fine so now I'm back at home playing the waiting game. During my stay, I had an IV for fluids, and during my second bag change my nurse proceeded to crank up the speed and walk out of my room. I glanced over at my IV tubing to see multiple, huge pockets of air making its way down the line. They were about the length of 1-2 ml of a syringe. Not sure exactly about actual ml. I've never seen air pockets so big in an IV before. They were complete pockets of empty space, not like the bubbles I've seen many times before. I was completely alone in the room, so I pretty much just shut my eyes and waited to see what would happen. As they steadily ran down in line into my IV, I was happy to report that nothing seemed to happen. I did get extremely congested, and lost most of my hearing due to pressure a few minutes later, but being pregnant I tend to have these episodes quite frequently anyways. I'm not at all confident that the two were related in any way. I never again saw the same nurse, and when I questioned the next nurse who came in she told me bubbles are normal. I understand, but these weren't bubbles so much as large air pockets. I suppose my question here is, is it really normal? How much air is too much air? There was never any flushing of my IV or fluids at any point during my stay. Thank you so much for your response!