Announcement!

No. I'm not pregnant.

Can't a female of child-bearing age make a non-pregnancy announcement?? Come on...

On Monday, November 9th, I'm starting a new job.

Background:

My first year after graduating from nursing school, I worked rotating shifts in the Special Care Nursery at Rex Hospital (now NICU woot woot).  Six weeks of day shift followed by six weeks of night shift. WOW WAS THAT FUN.  Said nobody ever.  After that year was up, I was given a choice of a permanent day shift position or a permanent night shift one.  I chose days.  From July of 2009 until November of 2013, I worked day shift.

And then we moved to Columbia, SC.

I had a feeling it wouldn't be too hard to find a new job as a nurse in a new city, but I didn't know if I could find one in my (1) specialty of Neonatal Intensive Care, working (2) part time (3) day shift.  Well, two out of three ain't bad.  I was hired by a magnificent manager for a part time, NICU, night shift position.

When I say I was hired by a magnificent manager, that is not lip-service.  I have never worked for a better supervisor in all my working life thus far.  She was a nurse in this unit before becoming the manager of it and that was a huge selling point for me.  She understands, inside and out, what it's like to be a bedside care nurse in this particular unit.  She is awesome.

Another reason I was excited about taking my current job was my coworkers.  This unit does not have a lot of turnover.  Nurses come here to work and they stay.  For a very long time.  That is a great sign of a positive work environment. The down side of the low turnover is there is a looooong wait to switch to day shift.

I was mildly concerned about working night shift again, but I figured Scott and I could figure it out.  My parents (our amazing childcare providers when I work) were on board with the decision for me to take the night shift job.  I accepted the position and started in January of 2014.

As is the case for a lot of new nurses on a particular unit, I oriented for several weeks on day shift before switching to my regular night shift time frame.  My preceptor was amazing.  She is a kind, knowledgeable, PATIENT woman, thank the Lord.  I was so grateful for her patience with me.  Even though I came to this new job with 5.5 years of experience caring for preemies, I had only dealt, for the most part, with 30 weekers and above.  It's a different world caring for micro-preemies.  At Rex, I could have a vent-baby for a few days, because that's usually all it took before they came off the vent.  At my current hospital, babies can be vented for weeks.  That's just the nature of micro-preemie lungs sometimes.  Also, I had a harder time than I ever would have expected learning a new hospital's way of doing things.  It was easier as a new grad learning how to take care of preemies than it was as a nurse with some experience trying to un-learn what I thought I knew and re-learn a new way.  That's where my preceptor's patience reeeeeally shined.  God bless her. Truly.

Since April or May of 2014, I've been on night shift.  Night shift is both gloriously awesome and horrifically bad all at the same time.  Lemme esplain.  There is too much.  Lemme sum up:

While at work, night shift is so.much.better than day shift.  Come on, hospital workers, admit it.  You know it's true.  The slightly more relaxed atmosphere, the people who work nights being a slightly quirky usually hilarious group, the pace, etc.  It is a magical place in a hospital at night, for the workers at least.  As a patient it is altogether CREEPY.

While away from work, night shift blows.  I find myself hanging out in one of two emotional/physical places:  I'm not sleeping and I should be or I am sleeping and I shouldn't be. The constant battle for getting sleep (after a shift or at night when not working) wreaks havoc on me.  I truly believe that people that manage to do long-term night shift work require less sleep than the average human and certainly less than I do.  Scott would probably tell you that even cats require less sleep than I do.  I need my sleep.  Night shift is not very forgiving in the sleep department.

In early September Scott and I had yet another conversation about me and my job and the struggle I was having with it.  We decided I would start looking for another job.  I applied for four jobs a few days later.  We covered this whole process in prayer.  I knew the Lord knew better than I did what exactly I was looking for and what I needed.  Within a week of my first application, I had an interview.

WOW.

That was much quicker than I expected!  Over the next few weeks, I interviewed for three of the four jobs for which I applied.  One job stood out to me from the other three as the most desirable.  In the end, that is the job that was offered to me and is the one I accepted.

It is not bedside care.  It's an administrative role.  It's called Nurse Navigator, but may function more like a discharge coordinator.  It's a new position, so I'll have some say in what the role looks like.  It's day shift.  It's part time.  Eventually there will be weekends, but initially, none.  It's no holidays.  I'll start out working three 8 hours shifts.  It's in the same hospital system just a different location about two miles away, so all my benefits should transfer over.

I am ecstatic.

The Lord heard my prayer and he provided in a huge way. Within two months of making a decision to look for other jobs, I am starting a new one.  That is crazy to me.  That kind of fast timeline, from the interview process to my current manager working with me on giving notice, that can only be the Lord in his grace and mercy providing for me.  I am so very grateful.

There are always positives and negatives to change.

• I've never done a non-bedside-care-kind-of-nursing-job.  I'm supposed to wear business casual clothes. Wha?!?  I don't even own that kind of stuff.  
• Our childcare burden will increase for my parents by at least one day/week. 
• Telling current coworkers I'm leaving is terrible.  I learned from my military childhood that leaving is always easier than being left.  Yes, I'm on the easier end of this equation.  But I'm an empathetic person and I understand the "what's wrong with us?? why are you leaving??" sentiment. My coworkers are incredible.  I would recommend this unit to anybody looking to work in a NICU.  The people and the manager (did I mention the awesome manager??) are stellar.  They just are.  At the risk of sounding like a horrible break up, "It's not you [guys].  It's me." Nights are killing me.

So there ya have it.

I have three more night shifts left this week before I transition to the new job.

Here we go!!

Snow Days, Hotels and Working

As you may already be aware, there was some major winter weather happening in South Carolina and lots of other southeast places this past week.  It made for some exciting situations.  Here's how it went down for me.  If you don't want the play-by-play, just skip to the end to read what I learned through this experience.

Monday:  Threat of winter weather happening on Wednesday early am through Thursday sometime.  Me: Crap.

Tuesday:  Hemmed and hawed about what to do about the impending weather situation since I live 18 miles from my job and was working both Wednesday and Thursday.  I went to get gas so if it took me hours and hours to get somewhere, my gas tank would not be a limiting factor.  My options were

A) Stay at the hospital (free).  Frequently in these type of situations, hospitals will offer for employees to stay in vacant patient rooms, on cots in conference rooms, wherever they can fit people to insure more of their folks show up to work, and do so on time.  I've never taken part in this before because at my last job I lived < 7 miles from work.  I figured if it got really bad, I would walk.  The major downside to this option is the quality of sleep to be had in a hospital, whether as a patient or a staff member, is COMPLETE AND TOTAL CRAP.  At least that's what I've heard from everyone who has ever done it.

B)  Stay at a hotel across the street from the hospital ($$$).  Unfortunately, the hotel across the street is not a Motel 6.  It's a Marriott.  I called to ask if they had any specials going for hospital employees, they said no.  $199/night was the going rate.  Awesome.  Jerks.

C)  Stay with a friend closer to work than where I live.  WINNER WINNER.  I texted two friends (one 3 miles from work, one 6 miles from work).  Jimmie and Cheryl (the 6 mile away friends) said it would be no problem for me to stay with them that night.  Brooke also said it would be no problem, so I asked her if I could make a reservation for her house for night #2 (Wednesday night).  I had not yet had a chance to get together with Jimmie and Cheryl since I moved to Columbia.  Our first sighting of one another was me saying "Heeeeey... can I come stay at your house tonight??" and showing up there three hours later.  Those are good friends.  We can just pick up where we left off years ago!

I packed enough clothes and such for being gone two days and working both of them.  I got to Jimmie and Cheryl's about 8:30pm on Tuesday night.  We stayed up way too late catching up but I loved it.  They are seriously good people.

Wednesday morning:  I left their house about 5:45 am in order to get to work by 6:45 am.  I know I only had 6 miles to go, but I had no idea how the roads were going to be.  I drove between 20-30 mph the whole way.  The ice layer already on the road was noticeable, but passable.  I could hear the sleet/freezing rain tinkling on my windshield as I made my way downtown.  Thankfully there were not many people on the road at that hour.  I ate breakfast in the cafeteria at work and then clocked in to start my day.  According to our manager, our unit was one of very few in the whole hospital that had every scheduled employee show up.  Go team!  Not even 30 minutes after I arrived at work, the precipitation changed to snow.

Wednesday day:  It transitioned throughout the day between snow, sleet, and freezing rain.  We all kept tabs on the conditions outside as we went about our work.  It became clear to me that I probably shouldn't even TRY to make it to Brooke's house (3 miles away) that even after work.  It was dreadful out.  Even with my 4 wheel drive Jeep, I didn't have a lot of confidence I could make it up and down hills on the ice-covered snow.  My amazingly gracious preceptor, Courtney, kindly offered for me to share a hotel room with her and another coworker that evening.  I accepted that offer.  I didn't want to spend the money for a hotel room, but I WANTED TO LIVE, not die in an icy ditch, so hotel it was.

Wednesday evening:  After work, a handful of us made our way from our hospital, across the street and down a block or two to our hotel, the Sheraton.  The Marriott was booked.  It was bitterly cold outside! Walking those couple of blocks was quite a feat.  The ice-crusted snow under our feet was completely and totally treacherous.  I was so glad none of us had to drive in it.  We dropped all of our stuff in our room and then headed back to the Marriott for dinner.  The dining room was packed.  They weren't allowing anyone to order off of the menu but made the buffet the only option.  Apparently a lot of their wait staff and chefs didn't make it to work that day.  Our server had been waiting on people since 6 am and there was no end in sight to her day.  I was suddenly VERY VERY grateful that at least my shift ended.  I got to be off work.  I now know a lot of others were not so fortunate.  After dinner we headed back to the hotel and settled in for the night.  We had lights out by 10 pm.  Such party animals we were. :)

Thursday morning:  Our room starting stirring about 5 am.  The three of us got ready, packed up and headed out for our walk to work.  It was so odd, walking to work.  In the dark.  Down the middle of the downtown street because it was slightly less treacherous than the sidewalk.  A truly bizarre experience.  We grabbed breakfast in the cafeteria before the work day began.  We're pretty sure there were some managers and other not-usually-front-line-people working the registers and dishing up plates.  This was an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation for their department too.  They had call outs.  They were running under-staffed.  They made it work.  We were so grateful they did.  (Our hotel offered free breakfast, but it started at 6:30 am, just a wee bit too late for us to partake.)

Thursday day:  We watched the weather again through the windows of our unit.  It snowed.  It stopped.  It flurried.  It stopped.  Whole snowmen fell from the sky, or so it seemed.  The flakes were SO BIG.  It stopped.  Families of our babies called to say they couldn't get out of their driveways.  We updated them about their babies.  Can you imagine?  Not even being able to get to your loved one in the hospital??

Thursday evening:  The trek home began.  There was some melting that happened during the day.  Some more roads were cleared.  I was hopeful for my trip home.  All I knew was that I WAS GONNA STAY IN MY BED THAT NIGHT.  Come what may, I was going home!!  I called home to let Scott know I was beginning my journey.  I drove 40-45 mph most of the way home.  There were not a lot of people on the road.  Those that were seemed a little more confident about the roads than I did.  They just went around me as I snail-paced it home.  It took me about 40 minutes to get home, but get home I did!!  I hugged Scott and told him that was the worst vacation I'd been on ever. :)  It really wasn't a horrible situation, thanks to the kind people around me, but I most certainly would rather be HOME.  And if I am staying in a hotel, I don't want it to be in between two work days!

I don't think I MOVED in my bed that night.  I slept so soundly!

What did I learn from this whole situation?

1)  Healthcare workers are not the only ones who still have to go to work NO MATTER WHAT.  Before this, I wouldn't have classified food service workers as part of "critical staffing needs", but they very.much.are.  So many of us were completely dependent on those hard workers showing up so we could EAT and make it through our days and nights away from home.  Food service workers in the hospital were absolutely critical.  The food service folks at the hotel we ate at were crucial as well.

2)  Be nice.  Just be nice.  I watched multiple people give our server a hard time at the hotel for dinner.  What's the point of that??  She was doing the best she could.  I tipped her well in hopes of helping make up for the jerk-faces she had to deal with.  Speaking of jerk-faces...read on.

3)  No seriously, BE NICE.  Five minutes after leaving dinner, where I was shocked at how mean people were to our server, I made a very snarky remark to some gentlemen standing outside of our hotel.  (These were the same gentlemen we had walked into the hotel earlier with when we checked in.  When we came back from dinner, that was the second time we had seen this group.) I made a snarky remark and one of the guys got offended.  Immediately afterward, as I rode up the elevator to the room, I could not believe myself.  I had barely even stopped thinking about the MEAN PEOPLE at dinner before mouthing off to a total stranger myself.  Unbelievable.  Mean people suck.  In that situation, I was a mean people too.  Dangitall.

4)  If you are ever looking for an opportunity to serve others in a bad weather situation and you live close enough to be safe to do so, here are some ideas.  Bring food to firemen, police officers, hospitals, cafeteria workers, housekeeping staff of hotels or hospitals, news reporters, linemen from power companies, etc.  Sure you can't feed the whole hospital or police department, but you could feed a few people and that would make a difference.  Bring bedding, blankets, air mattresses, tooth brushes, toiletries, to the above mentioned folks.  I packed an overnight bag, but forgot a toothbrush.  My manager provided me with one.  If you don't live near any of these places, maybe you live next door to a nurse or doctor or police officer or food service worker.  You could check on their family for them.  Help put their minds at ease about what's going on at home while they are stuck away from home.  My parents came to our house and stayed with Scott and the kids.  That eased my worrying immensely.  Scott could have handled our kids by himself with no problem.  But this way Scott was keeping an eye on my parents and my parents were keeping an eye on the kids and Scott.  I felt confident all was well at home without me. :)

5)  My preceptor Courtney deserves a medal.  I had only known her for four days before she was inviting me to split a room.  She didn't have to do that.  She spent all day, night, and day again with me.  She went above and beyond as a preceptor!!  I told my manager that this was the most THOROUGH orientation I've ever seen!  Mandy, another coworker, also deserves a medal.  She's the one I actually shared a BED with in the hotel!  Mandy, we have a special bond now, you and I.  :)

How was YOUR bad weather experience??  What recommendations would you make to people looking for ways to help?

First Day of School!

I'm not (too) ashamed to admit that yesterday I felt sorta like Nemo in this clip about my upcoming first day of work:




I was excited to go back to work.

I was excited because it's a brand new place (to me).

I'm an extroverted extrovert, so the idea of PEOPLE gets me pumped.

I cannot say that I was dripping with enthusiasm this morning at 6 am when my alarm went off.  But after waking up a bit and washing the sleep out of my eyes, the excitement resurfaced.  Also, perhaps related, the venti caramel chai tea latte encouraged enthusiasm to bubble to the top.  It also helped my hands be a little jittery, but that's neither here nor there.

For my badge-picture-day recently, I did my hair all purdy and even put on makeup (a rarity for me).  Today, when I was pretty certain there would be no pictures, I did my usual no-makeup, hair in a pony tail routine.  Last night as Scott and I were discussing what time I would need to leave in the morning and how long it would take me to get ready, I mentioned my no fancy hair/no makeup plans.  "Somebody's not getting a first impression rose,"  he said in typical quick-witted-Scott-style.  Thankfully for me, this is not "The Bachelor".

Back to this morning...  With minimal traffic encountered, I arrived at my new job site just before orientation day began.  I expected this first day of orientation to be a large group of people in one room all day with 7,612 presenters indoctrinating new employees on company culture, policies, and procedures.  I was not disappointed.  Of note, I learned that almost every speaker pronounced the word "Palmetto" as "PAL-metto", as in ole buddy ole 'pal'.  I had been pronouncing it like pall-metto (like in pall-bearers).  I'll let you know if my pronunciation changes throughout this first week of orientation...

I met a labor and delivery new-grad nurse at my table first thing this morning.  YAY!  Somebody remotely in my world!  At lunch she brought me a chocolate chip cookie from the buffet line.  As you can imagine, I declared her to be MY NEW BEST FRIEND.  (I'm so so sorry Amy, you knew I was easily bought with chocolate chip cookies...)

Speaking of food, they fed us twice today!  Breakfast and lunch!  Hey, if you wanna feed me two decent meals and pay me to be there, I'll listen to however many presenters you wanna throw at me.

All in all, it was a good first day.

Tomorrow begins clinical orientation (still not on the unit yet).  And it may SNOW tomorrow afternoon.  WHAAAA??  This is South Carolina.  There should be NO snow here.

I'll keep ya posted!  Yay!  Second day of school!  Second day of school!  Oh geez....there I go again...

Stuck

On work days I'm gone for 13+ hours.

On non-work days, I breathe a huge sigh of relief that I'm off.  I waste half of my time off in recovery from the work days.

I feel like I'm half-@$$ing every area of my life.  Motherhood, wife-hood, work-hood.

I am not the first working mother.  This has been done by bazillions of women before me.  Why do I feel this way about it?

STUCK.

The Here and Now

I sit here, my butt glued to this recliner.  The baby is in his nearby room talking up a storm in his crib.  He loves to try out all his sounds.  Over and over.  There's the Darth Vader breathing sound.  And the pterodactyl sound.  And the squeal-laugh-giggle sound.  And a slew of others.  So. dang. cute.  Not taking a nap, like he should be, but that's okay.  He's having a grand time talking to himself, so I'm not worried about him missing a nap.  

Me?  I'm tired.  Just plain tired.  Still struggling to find a balance between work life and home life.  I'm not doing either one particularly well at the moment.  My tiredness leads to grumpiness.  My grumpiness leads to a lack of patience, with everyone, about everything.  I don't like this "me".  I like easy-going, glass-half-full me.  Instead I'm uptight-glass-is-half-empty-and-probably-dirty-and-sitting-by-the-sink-with-all-the-other-dirty-dishes me.

The laundry is piled in the hallway.  Pretty soon those piles will finish creeping down the hallway and will reach the front door.  Nice.

I can't quite "win" in the kitchen, either.  The dirty dishes are....many.  The countertops (if you can even see them) are covered in bits and pieces of various meals from the past few weeks day.

Some sister-time today really helped.  It usually does. :)  Sisters are pretty important.  Well, maybe that's not an accurate blanket statement.  MY sister is pretty important.  She listens.  She hears what I'm really saying.  She helps ME hear what I'm really saying.  She's good people.  I'm grateful.  Our age difference kept us from being close when we were little.  She was into boys and I still thought they had cooties.  I was all care bears and rainbow bright and she was all fashion and make up and hanging out with friends.

But now, the age difference has all but disappeared.  We can talk and "get" each other better than most.  I like that.  That makes the here and now a little more manageable.

Alas, the happy baby in a crib sounds have turned a lot less happy.  I'm off to check on him.  He who makes the here and now a little more tolerable...

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Today I'm linking up with Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary's Just Write.  Check it out!

Back To Work

Tomorrow is the day.  THE day.  The go-back-to-work day.  To be honest, I am not excited.

Used to, I thought women who came back to work after maternity leave and cried were sissies.  Overly emotional sissies.  If you were one of those women, I'm sorry.  I misjudged you.

I get it now.

• I get it that you've been attached to this baby for 9 (really 10) months of pregnancy and 9 weeks after.  You've never spent more than a few hours away.  A work day suddenly feels like a lifetime of separation.
• I get that you feel like nobody can take better care of your baby than you.  
• I get that you even doubt your very-capable husband's ability to care for your child.  Much less a grandmother or a daycare worker.  
• I get that you're afraid of missing something fantastic that your baby does for the first time.  Or the hundredth.  
• I get that you feel like you're just starting to understand this role of "Mom", and going back to work to put on the "employee" hat might threaten your "Mom" role.  Like it's impossible to do both well. 
• I get that somewhere deep inside you feel a little guilty for not wanting to be a full time stay at home mom.  Because, to be sure, that makes you a bad mother.
• For other birthmothers, I get that going back to work and "leaving" your baby feels like a distant cousin-feeling to leaving your child that you placed for adoption.  And that stings.  Your heart wants to run into a closet and hide in the dark to avoid the pain.

So tomorrow when I rejoin the work force, if I shed a few tears, I'll be sure and give myself a little grace in the process.  I'm no sissy...