A new hospital...

I just returned from orienting at my new hospital with my manwife preceptor. I got my hospital ID badge, login info, and a general tour of my unit. There are several key differences from my old hospital (where I was in L&D as a nursing student and worked in postpartum for almost 2 yrs.) First of all, this hospital is a lot smaller which I like. All of their LDRs have jacuzzi tubs. My very first interaction with the nurses was a shoulder dystocia drill with Noelle.

Side note: Noelle is a computer simulator woman who can give birth, hemorrhage, etc. The baby can be manipulated in all sorts of ways too -- breech, etc. We have two at my university -- one in the med school and one in the nursing school. So I am pretty familiar with how Noelle works. She can talk...in one of our simulations she said "I don't feel very good" then she vomits (and there are sound effects for that too!) I mainly just observed.

Back to the story. So right from the beginning the nurses are talking to the patient about open-glottis pushing...telling her she can push whenever she feels ready. I literally had my jaw to the floor. Open glottis pushing? Evidence-based nursing care? Did I just enter the twilight zone? Well...since it was a shoulder dystocia drill, there was a shoulder dystocia. And my jaw hit the floor again when they flipped Noelle in hands-knees to deliver the baby. Nurses had no problem with it cos they see deliveries in hands-knees all the time (just in general, not necessarily shoulder dystocias all the time.) Also in this hospital, there are no "nurseries" like my old hospital. All healthy babies room in with their mothers. Also...no OBGYNs do circumcisions there. None of the midwives do it either. Wow...I'm impressed. I think I may like it. We also have an on-call room with a bed, computer for charting & W*tchChild, locker rooms with fairly decent accommodations and everyone was super friendly. My first 12hr day is on Monday with a midwife I've been working with frequently in the office. I'm looking forward to it.

In unrelated news, I'm going out of town for the weekend to spend it with Blondie (aka B.) We picked a destination halfway between us. It should be a lot of fun. A weird thing happened last night. So (as I think I've mentioned before) I dream a lot about being pg -- it's not unusual for me to be going about an everyday dream but 6 or 8 mos pg. Usually, I'm not giving birth and it's just a belly that I notice. I also rarely dream I'm pg with a partner. However last night, I had a very detailed and specific dream about giving birth. I'll try to describe it.

I was laboring on the couch. B was there with me. I went to the bathroom because I thought my bladder was a little full. I peed then got up, but felt the baby come down. I reached my hand down between my legs and felt the baby's hair. I called out to B who came into the bathroom. Just a couple of pushes and B catches this very cute baby girl. She was small -- 6 pounds or so. And I just held her...studying her. She had brown hair, big eyes, ten fingers, ten toes, my nose and was just bright-eyed and calm. B cut the cord. We were all still in the bathroom. Then came the placenta. I was looking at it...trying to make sure it was all there. But it wasn't a normal placenta --- it was shaped like an angel. It didn't bother me. I got cleaned up. And we moved from the bathroom to the bedroom and everyone got into bed for snuggling and breastfeeding. Everything still really calm. Then I woke up.

So when I woke up, I wanted to tell B about this dream. I called her and said I had had the strangest dream. I told her all about it and she was just kind of quiet. When I finished, she said "That is so weird because I had a dream about you giving birth last night too." In her dream, I was also at home, laboring in a pool -- she was with me, supporting me and climbed into the pool to sit behind me while I was giving birth. Her dream ended there. Isn't that so strange? We had very similar dreams at the same time. And we hadn't really spoken about being pg or birth or anything recently. So it's odd that we dreamt the same thing at the same time. I wonder what it all means...

School-wise we have our first midwifery exam of the semester on Tuesday. It covers first and second stage, and lab stuff (local & pudendal blocks, ISE/IUPCs, EBL, placental exam, etc.) We learned our hand maneuvers and the baby's rotation -- so that will be on there as well. I'm not super worried about the test, but I'm studying with one of the other CNM students tomorrow morning before I head out to my weekend with B. Anyway...I've got to get going on packing and homework.

Pictured above: Me snuggling the baby we caught about 30+ times on Tuesday. The midwives decided to name him Oscar.