You can't always get what you want

Hit the ground running, I did. In the OR and delivered by 0741AM. No time to think just move, move, MOVE! I loved it. I needed it. If they had told me I was going to be in the back all muthahumpin' day, I would have been all: BRING IT ON. 'Twas a day I didn't want to think, 'twas a day I needed to just do.



Handling losses is a part of my job that I embrace fully and totally. I ask for the patients who are losing their babies and willingly assist my co-workers when the job is theirs that shift. I want to be the caregiver because I care. No horn tooting or back slapping. I just feel very, very confident in my ability to help the patients & families who find themselves in the worst set of circumstances possible.

So, no pause, no hesitation: I leave the recovery room and my c-section and I take the patient waiting in triage.
The 19 year old about to lose her baby. She's quiet (understandably), she's pensive (of course), she will not make eye contact (totally expected). And she's alone; oh, sweet suffering souls of the planet do I wish she had stayed that way. Stayed alone. That her awful, sad, scary, damaged family had stayed away. There was no way in to any one of them. Closed, angry and insulated. It was like having 4 separate families in that room. No one spoke, no one made eye contact they all wanted what they wanted and not one of them asked the patient what she wanted. She's 19 years old! She already has 2 children! You are her lover, her mother, the baby's grandmother! Someone be gentle with her!

When the sweet babe finally delivered; delivered through much bleeding, I scooped him (yes, a boy) up in a warm blanket and whisked him to the warmer. The little one's hands were up by his face, his legs and big, beautiful feet were curled up tight. He was perfect. And I told him he was. I also told him that I believed he had made the right choice; that he was a smart, smart boy.