I found my niche

Oh my goodness I love the NICU! I cannot say how much I love it. I'm saddened by the fact that I am only unable to spend 24 hours there in my residency. But alas, we must move on.

I got to spend time with some feeder-growers, but ones that kept us on our toes. One of which would brady and have hold their breath - a septic work up showed an infection brewing but cultures didn't grow anything in the blood or urine. 48 hours of IV antibiotics and the poor baby seemed to be over the hump. Hopefully that's all that was needed.

Our other baby has chronic lung disease and provided us lots of frustrating moments because the baby would be low sating - setting off the monitor.... then a moment later be high sating, again sestting off the monitor as the expectation is that if a baby is high sating for more than a few minutes, then the nurse should turn down the FiO2. But if the baby was turned down, then we would end up with the monitor showing a SpO2 of 50-60%!!!  Not where you want a NICU baby! But we couldn't be chasing this baby all day long with the FiO2.

I was lucky to have a coach who showed me the ropes, but gave me the ability to show what I could do. By the second shift, I felt like I could try my hand at taking care of the babies - gavage feedings, tube feedings, changing diapers while the baby is still in the isolette, assessments, etc... And by the third day I was doing all the babies myself as well as the charting - and my coach was just checking my work afterwards to make sure I didn't miss anything.

I seriously hope that I end up there. It was seriously my cup of tea. Oh how I loved cuddling the babies and taking care of their needs.