Happy April Fools Day

Although I didn't have to deal with any April fools jokes today, except for one I pulled on myself, I did have an interesting day.

I had clinical starting at 7 this morning at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital. I had the same patient as Monday, who is this feisty almost two month old with a FULL head of crazy hair. She's as cute as can be and sooo spoiled (she LOVES to be held ALL the time). And she's a SCREAMER!!! When my partner and I attempted to get vitals on her she screamed the entire time (mainly because she was hungry and had a wet diaper). Then we had another screaming episode during her bath ... which halfway through she decided to pee on the pads we had under her. ha ha. But all in all, she was a pretty easy patient.

Near the end of clinical, however, my unstructor asked us if any of us wanted to put an NG tube in. I immediately said that I did, so my partner Jess and I both got to put NG tubes in babies. What I wasn't expecting was for the baby to be a premie who was born about a week and half ago at 31 weeks gestation. She was soooo tiny, but so so so cute. It made me really nervous... and for those who don't know what an NG tube is, it's a feeding tube that is placed into the stomach through the nose.. and for babies, especially premies, it's a REALLY small tube. I couldn't get it in quite right, as I'd never even done this on an adult, so my instructor started me off a bit, and I placed it the rest of the way. The gorgeous little baby did such a good job, which made it a lot easier and made me a lot less nervous. Then, after lunch, I got to watch Jess put hers in on an equally as small baby who was also extremely cute. She also got to take vitals on her and change her diaper to help out the nurse, which was interesting to see on a premie because she was just so tiny. So it was a pretty good clinical day. Monday night will be the first time I have a pediatric patient on my own without a partner, and all the patients on our floor are mostly under a year old, so it will be interesting.

As for the April Fools Joke I pulled on myself: I walked to my car and grabbed my keys, and for some reason my car key and alarm button were missing from my key ring. My car was still there, thank God, but i couldn't find these keys anywere. So I went back inside to the room where we keep our stuff and they weren't there either. So I asked the nurses at the nurses' station and it wasn't there either. So FINALLY on my way out (which at this point I was going to call Justin to tell him I needed to be picked up and taken to my dad's to get a spare key) I stopped by security to turn in my card and asked if anyone turned in keys. They did, thankfully, and he said that the other security gaurd found them in the parking lot. Not what I was expecting, but I'm glad they were at least found.

As I said yesterday, we finally got the chance to go see Sharon, Rob and baby Lucas last night. We went in to be greeted by Oscar, their very hyper boxer puppy who reminds me a LOT of Carlin. He was really excited to get some attention from Justin and I. Then we got to hold baby Lucas. He is sooo darn cute and makes the greatest faces. Rob and Sharon seem to be doing great with him, but you can tell they're definitely tired these days (mainly from the 9pm yawns already). But that's to be expected. Sharon seems to be recovering very well from the c-section and they both seem to be enjoying parenting very much. I definitely took advantage of the time to ask Sharon lots of questions about things like her feet swelling, the contractions, the nurses and rooms at GBMC (just in case we end up there instead of St. Joe's) and some others. Lucas was awake for almost our entire visit and was very entertaining. I can't wait until he and Jackson can become buddies :) While I was holding Lucas though, Jackson felt it necessary to kick Lucas, which I thought was funny as that would definitely be a little boy's way of saying hello. haha. It definitely made me anxious to meet our little guy.

Finally. Since I wasn't able to do this yesterday, here are my 26 week pictures (not too much different from the last pictures I posted, but here they are anyhow).