L&D4Lyfe

Hi Everyone! I'm an L&D Nurse pursuing nurse-midwifery as my end-goal degree. I've been on the path of wanting to be a midwife since 8th grade and I'm honing in on starting the next phase of my education: CNM school! My main question for those of you who have graduated and/or are currently in a program: what did you do to prepare for midwifery school? What do you wish you did to prepare for midwifery school? I had a pretty rough go of it in Nursing school, but I made it through. As I consider returning to school, I really would like to thrive, not just survive. Looking forward to hearing your input! By the time I apply for school, I will have 2 years postpartum experience, 3 years labor and delivery experience. I was a birth doula for 5 years before that. Thank you so much.

Don't go somewhere else and don't freak out! Oh my goodness you sound so much like I did as an orient and on my bad days, sometimes how I sound now! A few things that may or may not be helpful: (but let the record show I'm trying to be helpful) 1-- Take the lab draw off the table as to why your check-in meeting happened. I don't think those two are related. It's really common (and unprofessional in my opinion) for Nursing leadership staff to call you in unannounced for those check-in's. I never knew when mine were happening and they freaked me out every time. I thought at first it was intentionally like that but watching now, it seems like their job is so hectic that they just remember on the fly. They're not watching you SO intently that that lab draw mistake is what led them to talk with you. It just was time to check-in. I have mislabelled in just about every way possible (thankfully at my hospital they let us go down and correct it but still). Can't tell you how many times it's happened to me and my colleagues. It's night shift, we are tired, sometimes moving fast, it happens. ALSO don't worry about IV's either. You will get it, it sounds like you are getting it, it just takes time. And with IV's you kinda go on a streak of getting every single one then missing a few. Try not to take it personally if you can (thats hard for me to do). Those tasks are definitely important but I remember as a new grad those were like LIFE AND DEATH to me when really they're not as important as the big picture-- caring for and monitoring the wellbeing of a pt and baby in labor. I'm not saying don't care about whether or not you can, if you can quickly, etc. Just trying to say it's not the main thing. Do your very best, if you miss once or twice you call in someone else to help. Bigger focus= Do you get the big picture? Can you read your FHR strip? Do you know what interventions are important when? Do you know where you're headed in terms of the plan of care (mag/csec/ laboring/epidural) and what you need for those steps? Do you know how to keep someone safe? That's what's most important. Tasks and speed come with time and experience. Just do your best every time. Review, ask for feedback. Keep showing up and showing that you care and fight for competency in this because it's where your heart is at, you can do it!! 2-- the whole "organize your patient visits" stuck out to me. I'm thinking that means that maybe your organization in terms of what you do and when you do it is a little off. I had some trouble with that to start out. Do you have a set way of doing things for each kind of scenario (ex: labor check= put them on the monitor/set of vitals/ moving/leaking/blood/ contractions questions, then maybe a cervical exam if appropriate). Its really important in my experience to do things the same way most of the time, it prevents me missing any of the steps. Maybe take a minute and write out your flow for each scenario and go over it a few times. It's not going to click overnight. Everyone I know tells me around the two year mark it clicks. Some people it takes longer. I'm almost at 2 years myself and I feel like things are coming together more everyday. 3-- Every positive comment you get repeat to yourself. I play the negatives on repeat and had to change my focus in order to succeed. Being hard on yourself is not going to be what gets you through this orientation. You need to hold yourself to high standards but also cut yourself a little slack. You are LEARNING. And when you do well, allow yourself to believe you're doing well. Accepting it won't make you lazy and it won't snatch away your progress. I literally got into the habit of repeating the kind compliments three times. "Hey Erika, good job on that." "Hey Erika, good job on that" "Hey Erika, good job on that." DO. NOT. QUIT. It doesn't sound to me like these people are being unfair, doesn't sound like they're creating a toxic space for you. If that's the case, RUN. I had to do that my first RN work experience. Kick that shame and despair to the curb. Do the best you can each day with ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart that cares and you will get there!! Keep on keeping on, girl! Don't take things too hard. We need more people in this like you!

I would absolutely fight to get an L&D job right out of school, but big piece of advice: Not everywhere that decides to give you a shot is actually capable of giving you a real shot. When you go into your interviews find out more about the hospitals: Are they private or county hospitals? Is it a teaching hospital? Have new grads been trained to their unit before? do they have a set system or a cohort of people who will go through it with you? do they have a nurse educator? Are they short-staffed/do people on the unit seem to be satisfied with management and have the resources they need to be successful? My first shot at L&D was a bust because I took a job at a smaller private hospital without many resources, had an unsupportive preceptor and not a lot of others to turn to, in a hospital culture where being anything less than perfect was unacceptable. I went to Postpartum for two years then ended up at a different hospital after that to try Labor and Delivery again. The new hospital I work at is night and day to my first job. It's a large county hospital, a teaching hospital where learning and asking questions are welcomed and making mistakes are just part of being human, something you grow from. I'm flourishing now when before I was drowning and constantly being told it was all my fault! I wish I hadn't been so desperate for a job in L&D that I was willing to go anywhere. I wish I'd been able to see the first hospital I interviewed at wasn't going to be able to support me. I honestly feel like I didn't know what to look for though until I went through it: Go with a teaching hospital, somewhere that is used to new things/new faces. Somewhere where there are multiple layers of support for new grads and where new grads often go to get trained in L&D. You only get that foundation one time! Switching into postpartum and doing that first was actually a really great way to learn nursing and be in a specialty that was close to what I wanted. I feel like Mother/Baby is kind of like the med-surg of women's health, prepared me well for the transition into L&D. That would be another good option for you, to start out there. It's a fairly common way to do things. If not postpartum, I'd try for something OR, where you learn sterile techinique/timeouts/counts and other things that will also be something you have to do during a csection. Good luck!! ?

That was how it was at the hospital I worked in as a postpartum RN. Either a mag pt. and a m/b couplet, a mag pt. and two NICU moms (aka babies in NICU), or two mag pt.'s.

I know we will often deliver a breech twin B as long as the baby A is vertex... that's the only kind of sort of policy I can think of when it comes to lady partsl breech.

I'm a newer L&D nurse just about to hit my 1-year anniversary. I had my first birth with a bad outcome recently. When I say bad outcome I mean a birth where baby was born severely compromised, requiring resuscitation and transport to a facility that could provide a higher level of care. I've handled other obstetric emergencies (not many but a few) but they've all fortunately ended with fairly positive outcomes. In this case, the baby had a prolonged deceleration that landed the mom, a G1PO 41 weeker without other risk factors into the OR for an emergency C-section under general anesthesia. Apgars 1/3/8 and baby shipped to another facility almost directly following birth. I have replayed the scenario over and over in my head, talked to my supervisor, charge, the OB who did the case and everyone says there is nothing that could have done to prevent it and that we did all we could for them in the moment. It's still unclear exactly what caused the deceleration. We will be having a debrief in a few days and are doing a risk cause analysis to figure out what went well, what didn't, and how we can improve. I've been back to work since, but still struggling emotionally with it. I'm a woman of faith and have been praying, journalling, talked with my family and the people I work with about it. I finally have a nice stretch of days off before I have to go back and I'm hoping with some space and rest I'll feel a little better. Is there anything that helped you in healing from traumatic births/bad outcomes? I would love to hear any other tips or insight from people on how to navigate it. Thank you!

Hello! I'm a new nurse with almost a year under my belt. Long story short here's where I'm at: I got my dream job in L&D at a large hospital (6-700 births/month) and WAS NOT READY FOR IT. Moved for the job, knew no one, had bad training experiences and just was way overwhelmed and over my head (New grads, listen to what people say about getting experience before going to L&D!). After two months on that unit, I was lucky enough to transfer to Postpartum and have been there almost 10 months. Love it! Such a great place for new grads interested in pursuing women and children's health! I've learned so much and it's so rewarding. I really want to return to L&D eventually (within 1-3 years) but I also just want experience in everything women/baby health (L&D, PP, NICU, GYN, even clinic work). I want to be a Nurse-Midwife eventually, it has been the real dream since 8th grade. Some of the best nurses on my unit worked at a small hospital in an LDRP unit where they didn't even have CNA's to help them out. They had to know how to do everything and their days were always different. I find that partially terrifying but also thrilling. I would love the kind of experience I could get with a year or two on an LDRP floor. I think that at a smaller hospital, the pace may be slower than what I experienced initially at my first job and it could give me a little more space to learn and grow, but I realize it also could mean I have to assume a higher level of responsibility than what others in larger hospitals with more infrastructure would have to assume. (I would love someones thoughts on that and whether or not that's true!) I have a lot of questions: How do you find a job like that? How do you figure out which hospitals are LDRP and which are separate? And also for someone like me who tried out L&D a little too early, when is the right time to try again? What should I be looking for in where I end up? Or is that something I should just answer for myself? Thank you in advance for anyone who answers!

Anyone? I'd love an answer. What I think is that I went through step 1, and 2 but not step 3. That it's when you're pressing submit to get you to that third step of finalizing your payment, you get to see if the trick is there or not. I would love some reassurance that I'm right or an honest answer that I'm not! THANK YOU!!

I got my ticket a few days after that last post! I gave my community college transcripts to them and the next day got my ticket.

Ok guys... freaking out. I took the test yesterday at 2pm. I finished at 7:30pm with 127 questions. I was so tired by the time I got home at 11pm (I took the test a ways away because it was the earliest test date I could get) and was just dying to try to figure out how I did. I tried to re-register and made it to credit card info, I didn't press submit and actually try to charge it to my card. I put real info in there and didn't want to actually get charged an additional $200 yet. Was the Pearson trick supposed to show up before I even got to the credit card info? Or would the pop-up have potentially happened if I pressed submit? I've decided I'm not going to try any other kind of trick except checking the BON for License Verification on Monday. I shouldn't have even tried last night, it didn't make anything better! It was only 4 hours post-test when I tried to look, I don't know how accurate it was anyway since I don't know if I did the trick right. The test was HARD. It totally targeted my weaknesses which I learned were infection control and diet (which is so frustrating because that doesn't even feel like the heart of Nursing!!). The waiting is awful. Thanks for answering my question!

Thank you everyone for the helpful comments. I have seen that my check went through, so the application arrived with them. However, it says it was cashed Jan. 22nd which makes me concerned they won't process the paperwork until that time. Also, I wasn't aware of the clause about the requirement listed in the comment above:transcripts are required from all colleges and/or universities you attended that reflect courses required for a degree in nursing, including general education course requirements and all nursing courses. I attended community college for two years taking my pre-requisites and general ed prior to transferring to nursing school. Would I fill out the Request for Transcript form and send it over with the transcripts or just send the transcripts? The Request for Transcript form seems to be specific for the Registered Nursing school that I attended, not a community college. This is so frustrating! I've tried emailing them 3 times and spent several days on the phone trying to contact them. I'm going on a week-long vacation and planning on driving to Sacramento if I don't have an ATT in my hands by then. Just to clarify: I have an account with Pearson Vue, I've paid my $200, I've mailed in an application to the California BRN and paid the $150 (since I did the LiveScan and not the fingerprint board thing). Besides the transcripts, if anyone else can see anything I'm missing please don't hesitate to let me know!

Thank you so much for the response and being willing to help me see what the ATT looks like! I have registered with Pearson Vue and paid the $200, did so about 2 months before I applied for the NCLEX. I chatted with them today and they told me I should get in touch with the California BON. I've decided that if I don't get my ATT by March 3rd I will drive the three hours to Sacramento and find out if there are issues/what the holdup is. I've tried calling and emailing without being able to hear from them and that's the last thing I know to do. I hope I don't have to do that though!

Hi! I graduated on December 18th from Nursing at a school in Virginia. I was unable to use the online NCLEX application using the BreEZe system because they had the wrong ID code for my school listed and there was no way to correct it. I contacted the dean of my Nursing program and she had no idea how to help me, and I tried for three days to get ahold of the California Board of Nursing with no luck on the phone nearly the whole time they were open getting hung up on again and again. I eventually decided to mail a paper application over with 2-day shipping and tracked it (so I know they received it). I did that on the 15th of December and my transcripts were sent on the 19th. Currently, the California Board of Nursing has listed that their processing time is 10-12 weeks long for first-time testers and that they're currently processing applications that arrived during the time of November 15-30th. I'm just starting to go crazy waiting for my ticket and am kind of psyching myself out. If I had been able to apply online at least I could've checked the status of my application that way! But with applying through the mail there's no way to check on it, is there? I keep thinking What if I did something wrong in the paperwork? What if the paperwork is lost? I'm just starting to get concerned that I'll have to find a way to contact them and I haven't been successful yet in actually talking to anyone from there. Can anybody who has been through this recently offer me some reassurance? Does anyone know any alternative ways to contact California Board of Nursing? I just don't want to find out I've been waiting for 2 1/2 months and there's been some problem this whole time! Also, what does the email look like? Who is the sender/what does the subject line look like? I just want to know what an actual ATT looks like! Thank you so much!

Hello! I'm trying to submit my application for NCLEX to California's BRN and am all set except for one thing. There is a section on BreEZe where they ask you to put in information about your Nursing School. Within that there is a drop-down bar that asks for the name of your Registered Nursing School. This is where the problem is. My school, Liberty University shows up twice. One says PH800 and the other says F2039. I contacted the director of our School of Nursing and she told me the ID # is US2850000 and told me to contact the BRN. I've tried emailing and calling (a total of 25 times now) and BRN is not getting back to me. Any suggestions on what I can do to get to the bottom of this?? Thanks!