While working in an obstetrics or maternity ward can be demanding, one of the incomparable advantages of becoming a labour and delivery nurse is helping a mother bring a new infant into the world.
However, there’s a lot more to your day than playing with cute kids. Here are some things you wish you’d know before taking on maternity nursing jobs.
1. You are a part of someone’s main life event every time you get to work.
It’s lovely and exciting, but it’s also exhausting and high-pressure. In one room, you may have a patient who has just given birth to a healthy baby and is crying joyful tears, and in another, you may have a patient who has just lost her newborn. You’re a part of someone’s milestone, whether happy or not, and you have to be able to change your feelings depending on your patients.
2. You’re still human, regardless of your ability to save lives.
Humans make errors. They know a lot more than they’d like to confess. Every night, we engage with patients about feeding plans, such as whether the mother will feed the baby with a bottle, provide the baby with a bottle, or whether the mother wants to breastfeed. There are moments where there are misunderstandings. Mistakes happen, and you learn from them.
3. The days are long, and you’ll spend the majority of your 12-hour shift on your feet.
Working for half a day is taxing on both your body and your feet. There’s always a lot going on between medicating your patients’ anguish, teaching women how to breastfeed, and feeding babies yourself. However, you won’t be able to take your patients home with you. You won’t be able to work from home until you’ve clocked out, allowing you to get the rest you need.
4. A mother’s birthing plan may or may not coincide with the baby’s.
Many women want to be in charge of their child’s birth, so they have a birth plan. But the truth is that no one can predict what will or will not happen. A patient may have been in labour for 48 hours, and her birthing plan states that no medications will be used. But as a nurse, I would always recommend an epidural to help her get the rest she needs to push later and prevent a C-section.
5. You’ll develop a closer bond with your patients than you ever imagined.
Your patients have a special bond with you because they share one of the most exciting times in their lives with you. You’ll have moms who want to keep sharing memories with you, and you’ll feel unbelievable when they send you pictures of their 5-year-olds that you cared for when they were just a minute old.
6. You’ll have to justify your friends and family why you’ll be absent from work regularly due to double shifts.
If you’re not working, you’re sleeping and no one should try to call or text you because they’re afraid they’ll wake you up.
You have to become honest and sencire about your job. It’s just not only for nursing jobs but also for the tutor, nanny or manny jobs.
