On taking notes and refraining from talking.

 “Every single thing is tougher in pregnancy, if you are pregnant.”

Trust me, that is NOT what my teacher said- she was really talking nutrition (GREAT lecture by the way!) But I wrote it and discovered my little mistake last night when I was studying for our final. Oops…

Nursing for the Child Bearing Family is coming to a close. Terribly sad. In this class you will learn a ridiculous amount about little fetuses, moms, and sweet babies. I say ‘ridiculous’ because your brain will be so filled with fabulous information that you won’t know that to do with it all. You’ll feel like you’re learning information that can change the world.

You’ll want to sign up for La Leche League, you’ll want to call every woman of child bearing age that you know and inform her that she must go directly to the store (right now) and purchase prenatal vitamins and then take them because she NEEDS Folic Acid.

You’ll watch a show about delivering babies that you used to adore, but then you’ll hear the doctor and nurses tell the mom to hold her breath and push while she counts to ten, then they will have the audacity to tell the mom to be silent when she pushes and you’ll be sad and want to teach these health care professionals that they are not using the best evidence based practice to treat their patient (you’ll be thankful again for such an awesome school that DOES teach you the best evidence based practices). Even more sad, is when you find yourself at clinical, bright eyed, first year nursing student-  and you’ll see practices that might disillusion you. Things you learned there is NO research to support. You’ll learn to refrain from giving advice to health care professionals- for now. You’ll find yourself at the grocery store standing in line next to a pregnant woman and you’ll have to literally put your hand over your mouth so you don’t start giving her advice that she didn’t ask for.

Really, your intentions will be great. But you’ll also realize that sometimes, even when advice is really good, it is not the appropriate time to give it. So, last night when I saw the pregnant woman behind me, I really-really wanted to ask her if she’d taken any classes, or hired a doula, or made a birth plan, or if she called her doctor to see if he knew how to deliver her baby with an intact perineum. I wanted to tell her to wait until her contractions were regular and 3-5 minutes apart before she went to the hospital to avoid unnecessary interventions! But yikes. Probably inappropriate- right?

Um yes, so what to do with all this information? Call unsuspecting friends/sister in law’s and give them all sorts of stats and information and then stay committed to life-time learning and always using the best research and evidence based practice to guide my own practices. That’s how I’m going to change the world.

Peace.

Rachel