“A Nurse’s Wish in Labor and Delivery” – Did you read it?

In a recent article for The Huffington Post, RN Shelly Lopez Gray explained the ups and downs of being a labor and delivery nurse. The piece is a tear-jerker (keep your tissues nearby), and we hope the moving conclusion to the article will help you through even your toughest days on the job.

The highs and lows:

As an obstetrical nurse, I am surrounded by beauty every single day I come to work. What people who don’t work in obstetrics don’t know is that labor and delivery can also be incredibly sad. As maternal child nurses, we’re not just holding babies and taking pictures of new parents. Some days, we leave work so emotionally shattered, we feel crippled by the weight. I cannot count how many bad or unfortunate things I have seen in my short career as a nurse. But without hesitation, the absolute worst thing I have ever experienced is the unexpected death of a baby.

One story:

I once admitted a young mother in labor. She was pregnant with her first baby, and she kept telling me how excited she was to finally meet her baby girl. Both sets of grandparents were with the young couple. They were all eagerly awaiting the birth of their very first grandchild. The mother was the most perfect patient any nurse could have asked for. A petal-pink lace dress delicately hung on a baby hanger inside the patient’s room. 

When she finally felt the urge to push, she delivered the most beautiful, perfect baby with a sweet button nose and the longest lashes I had ever seen. But we could immediately see what was wrong. And I still remember it all, as if in slow motion. With the absence of a baby cry and the frantic moves of every nurse in the room, I still remember that mother hysterically asking what was happening. I still remember her husband crying with his head in his hands. Nurses and physicians flooded into the room, crowding around the baby in the warmer. I remember watching the chest compressions, watching the intubation, watching the placement of the umbilical lines. But the absolute best physicians and the greatest nurses I have ever worked with, all working quickly and steadily together, were unable to save that baby. I still remember that mother trying to climb out of her bed, clawing at the rails, her legs still numb from her epidural. And when the room, full of physicians and nurses and a code team, went silent, she fell back into her bed paralyzed in disbelief and in shock. The time of death was called at 7:08.

Thinking about that day, tears still blind my vision and it’s still a little hard to breathe. Thinking about that day, I still choke on all the sadness. That day, in that delivery, I felt suffocated by every event in the room. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I didn’t know how I was supposed to help her. Long after everyone had left, I didn’t want to leave her alone in a room empty of a warmer or a crib. The room felt so bare. When I finally left her hours after my shift, it all hit me. My heart pounded out of my ears and the realization of what had just happened made me sink in so much sadness. I walked into the break room, full of nurses with red faces and tear-stained cheeks, and we hugged each other and I sobbed into their shoulders. And then I got my things and went home, because I had to work the next day and because that’s what we do as nurses.

Her wish:

As I sit here typing this, I have to blink away tears. Thinking about everything that could go wrong in labor and delivery, thinking about everything that does go wrong in labor and delivery, I have to close my eyes and wish with everything I have for only one thing.

This holiday season, my one wish is that every nurse knows their worth and that every patient knows theirs. If you are a nurse or if you are a patient, do not ever be afraid to voice your concerns. Do not ever be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes, no amount of planning can alter a bad outcome. Sometimes nothing we do can prepare us for what we’ll be presented with. But we all have to work together to prevent the negative outcomes we can. And it’s not just about bad outcomes, it’s about the best outcomes. We can no longer solely focus on improving communication between the physician and the nurse. We have to engage our patients, because they know more than we think they do and they know more than they’re telling us.

Read the rest of the article here, and then tell us: Why do you keep returning to work as a nurse, even after the hardest days on the job? Share your thoughts in the comments below.