I used to work with...
My career as a NICU nurse began 35 years ago with a big bang. As I walked into the unit, dressed in the provided rosy pink scrubs as a brand-new RN, I was excitedly greeted by the unit’s nurse educator.
“Oh good, you’re here! We just admitted a 26 weeker! You have to see this!”
Did I have any idea what was going on? No. No, I had no idea. But soon enough…
I came upon the radiant warmer surrounded by people dressed in similar scrubs. One looked up and, upon seeing me, step aside just a little so that I could see…
Oh shit, I thought to myself! Lying on the radiant warmer was the most impossibly tiny baby I had ever seen at that point in my life. A girl, Baylee is her name, her father announced to anyone listening as he witnessed several people breathing for Baylee, attaching monitoring equipment, inserting IV lines into the stump of her umbilical cord and administering fluids and medication. Two other people in rosy pink scrubs circled around the the radiant warmer handing off supplies as needed, calling out the time every couple minutes or so and furiously writing things down. Another stood close to Baylee’s dad quietly explaining what was happening to Baylee in this her first hour of life. And there was me, probably looking as lost and terrified as Baylee’s dad looked to me.
What did I get myself into here?
Two weeks later, with the guidance of my preceptor, I was assessing Baylee: auscultating her heart and breath sounds, examining her 885 gram body from head to toe, checking measurements of the endotracheal tube inserted down her throat past her vocal cords and the umbilical arterial and venous lines inserted into what remained of her umbilical stump. After changing her diaper, that was no bigger than a saltine, my preceptor directed me to turn her from her back to her belly - but be careful of all of the lines attached to her body.
!!!
As I oh so very slowly began to flip Baylee onto her belly, my preceptor leaned in and whispered behind me, “You need to breathe, Laura.”
A little more than three months later, right around Baylee’s due date, I was one of a dozen or so NICU staff who gathered to say goodbye to Baylee and her happy mother and father as they were officially discharged from the NICU. Oh, and I was officially on my own ready to independently care for our patients as a NICU nurse.
Truth be told, I never really felt comfortable or confident in my ability to care for our tiny patients in the NICU until I was about three years or so into my career, which is pretty typical for your average registered nurse in a high acuity intensive care setting.
Meanwhile, Baylee is 35 years old now and, according to her mother, whom I still hear from occasionally thanks to Facebook, is a mother of two herself.
Years and years have passed with me meeting too many babies and their parents on what is the best and the worst and the scariest days of their lives. Every single time I have helped a mama hold their impossibly tiny baby skin to skin for the very first time with all of the IV tubing, ventilator tubing and monitor wires attached I think of that very first baby, Zoe, and her mama and that moment they met skin to skin for the very first time. I recall how we nurses pushed back against the providers concerns and fears to allow us to help Zoe and her mama kangaroo together back then even if it wasn’t the way we did things back then! My hats off to that mama who bravely agreed to our care plan and herself demanded that the providers let her hold her ventilator dependent 1 1/2 pound baby girl! Thirty-some years later, skin to skin with all the umbilical lines and ventilator tubings is indeed a thing and, as a matter of fact, a standard of care because clinical evidence shows just how beneficial it is for micro preemies and their post partum mothers.
Fun fact: that baby Zoe was named after my baby Zoë, who apparently was all my coworkers could talk about because she was arguably the MOST adorable 9 month old they have ever encountered at another coworker’s baby shower the weekend before baby Zoe was born and Zoe’s mama clinging to all the hope she dared to pray for wished for her baby girl to be a force of nature like my Zoë. Zoe’s mama told me that the very first time I met her a week after her baby girl was born. I loved that the Zoes mamas remain forever connected by that and that our girls went to the same preschool together where they were known as the Zoes and were absolutely together a formidable force to be reckoned with.
I can’t even begin to count how many diapers I have changed through the years, how much baby poop and puke I have been baptized in during my shift to shift care in the last 35 years. Just know that there is nothing worse than partially digested Pregestimil or Nutramigen vomit on your person.
For so many years, decades even, I have had the privilege of meeting brand new humans and their families on what should be the very best days and, most often the worst days of their lives. I have assisted them in holding their babies for the very first times, and sometimes, for the very last time. There has never not been a moment where I did not stop and regard just what a sacred honor that this was. So much has changed, evolved and improved in my 35 years as a NICU nurse in how we do things and why we do things to the point that the majority of our babies’ length of stay and outcomes is something that we could have never imagined for the babies I cared for 35 years ago. And I got to be a part of all of that!
Being a NICU healthcare provider shaped me, nurtured me, grew me into who I am. It is where I forged so many deep, abiding friendships, whether they be families I met and cared for or colleagues who I shared with so many joys, disappointments and o’dark thirty conversations. The NICU was where I met my son, who completed our family circus.
With all of this, and so much more, it is hard to imagine why I would ever want to leave such a vocation. Nevertheless, it is time. The Covid pandemic and its aftermath made me see that. My darling husband cancer diagnosis and treatment and him needing me by his side forced me to understand that. As much as I love those tiny humans and their dear families, it is time for me to say goodbye. And so, this last Thursday was to be my final shift. I saw it coming. I was literally counting down to it. But the real realness of it all did not click until Thursday afternoon when I was told that due to low patient census I would be called off for the night.
And so while my career as a NICU nurse began in a very big YOU ARE HERE way, it was closing quietly in a, “Hey, we are. only using 6 nurses tonight so your are #2 of 4 nurses called off tonight. Can you bring in your badge?”
It really was that real! In with a bang and out with a quiet sigh.
The retirement celebration with my colleagues will come soon so it’s okay.
It is time.
A friend, in congratulating me on my retirement commented on me entering this new era, this new adventure:
Next week you’re gonna say “I used to work with…” I so enjoy watching you wrap up this incredible chapter.
Oh yes, the waterworks FINALLY commenced with her message.
I used to…
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I have been a NICU RN for just a little more then half of my life; but now here I am in the I used to…era.
And so, now I leave behind, quite literally, my very last fuck to the next per diem princess and move on to my next juggling adventure; which yes, from time to time, might include me reminiscing when I used to work with…”
I used to work with…
But now?
Now I am retired.
