settle in for a good read.......

ok, so are you ready for the updates of our life? well, i started my third semester of school the third week of august. it is going good. we will be studying labor and delivery, pediatrics, and mental health. i have class thurdays from 1pm-5pm and clinicals on friday nights from 6pm-6am. So, my time away from Eden is alot less than the first year. i will keep this clinical rotation for the last year. so i will be a night owl. i have done three night thus far and it seems as though this semester, clinical wise, will be pretty emotionally draining for me. my first night i was in the neonatal intensive care unit and it was hard. we were only responsible for two babies but one was really sick and took up so much of our time. it is hard to work around babies that should still be growing in a mommy's tummy. the saying of the NICU nurses for the babies is: if you touch me i will die, if you don't touch me i will die. there is a fine line to walk with these little ones. i don't know if i will ever be cut out to do that type of nursing. it takes knowledge and compassion that i just don't have. not that someday i won't but now it pushes me so far outside of my comfort zone it feels like i would never be competent enough for such a highly skilled area of nursing. i came home that morning so grateful that Eden was born perfect and healthly. i went into her room and stared at her for a long time just being thankful.
my second rotation was on the mom and baby floor which was much less hectic. our moms were healthy and our babies were healthy. but i kind of felt like me and my nurse were just glorified waitresses. we do a lot of fetching. getting drinks, sheets, snacks, bringing the babies to the moms, taking the babies back to the nursery. overall it was a great experience but it helped to cement that i am a surgical junkie. not that i didn't learn alot on the floor. i just wouldn't love what i did, if i was a mom and baby nurse.
and last friday night i was on the mental health floor. and it was.........interesting. psychiatric nursing is whole other ball game. much less clinical skill and much, much, much more theraputic communication. also, was taken outside my comfort zone but surprisingly enough found it to be rewarding and i enjoyed it. so just goes to show, you never know what you might be good at.
ok, so enough about school, but i think this blog my become my form of therapy to assist me through the rest of school without becoming a patient on the psych ward. seriously though, i need an outlet for stress, thought, emotions, and what better place than a blog, right? anyway.......Eden will be one on the 16th. holy crap! my little baby is going to be a year old. i can't believe how fast the time has zoomed by. it makes me feel a myriad of emotion: happy, sad, hesitant, and eager. we will have a party for her on saturday and it will be fantastic. she is so amazing i still can't believe we were blessed enough to have her entrusted to us. we will learn much more from her than we could ever hope to teach her. if our living/employment/school situation were better i would be thinking "time for another"! but that won't happen for awhile. i'll just try to find time to be a passing student and a good mommy to eden. the rest will find it's own way of working out.

Shhhhhhh don't tell.........

so, i'm at clinicals in the psych ward. all the patients are sleeping and i'm updating my blog because the hospital has complimentary wi fi. fantastic you say. i also say fantastic. that is the perk to clinical rotations at night and that is when everybody is sleeping you don't have much to do. but my time is limited so i will keep it short. i have to leave the unit at midnight and it is oh, 11: 42 so i'll be gone shortly. it has been much too long since i updated pictures. i have a few of my favorites that we have taken lately.

sleeping with daddy. ah, so precious.

eden on the porch in her favorite chair.

what a ray of sunshine?

just love this one