And the Adventure Keeps Getting Better

I finally started orienting on nightshift. I was a lot more alert and the nurses were more my age. My new preceptor gave me a run for my money. We will call her Kelly. She was very intelligent and knew her sh%!. Which can sometimes be intimidating. The good thing was, I was great at asking questions if I didn't know the answer to something. Dumb or not, always ask. She was a great preceptor, but over time I became more ready to just be on my own. I was tired of having someone watch every move I made. A lot of orientation was monotonous paperwork, quizzes and checkoffs. If I wasn't busy, we would work on paperwork...that was annoying. I'd sit down and she'd pull out this my big yellow file and we'd go over what i'd learned. I WILL NOT miss that part. Towards the end of nightshift orientation, for the first time I was more than ready to be on my own. I was scared, but ready. 

My whole orientation on days and nights was fair. They give the new nurses the most critical and challenging babies. I had a few but what I found really challenging were the NAS (Neonatal Abstinence Sydrome) babies. NAS is something you can't understand unless you work with a baby who is withdrawing. Imagine a situation where you have a patient whose mother did all types of drugs during her pregnancy. You've got heroin, crack to name a few but the most frequent addiction is to opiates. These babies are inconsolable, they have high pitched cries that will shatter glass, they shake uncontrollably, vomit, diarrhea and can die if weaned too fast. So not only do you deal with this baby who is almost helpless, but you may have another baby to take care of. Then there is the mother...I've found that I cannot be naive when it comes to these mom's. Most of them talk a great game, give a sob story about how they didn't know the drug would affect their baby or they just took one pill. Then on the other hand will get frustrated with the nursing staff when they realize their baby could be in the hospital for a month at the least or they don't want them to have the morphine to help the baby wean. This can be very stressful for nurses because we have to try and not be judgmental but there are a thousand things you want to say to the mother who did this to her baby.