I DID IT!!!

I took, and passed the NCLEX-RN... my nursing boards! I am now a licensed nurse in New York State.

Whoo hoo!!!

I spent Monday and Tuesday in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). It was boring, and kinda sad - except for when a new mom and dad came in and got to touch their babies, and the dad (a big BIG) man was so sweet.

We discussed something interesting in class yesterday that I didn't even know about. Apparently, Orthodox Jews wait longer before going to the hospital. I mean, I always new to wait as long as you can before you go, but apparently it's a Jewish thing... Italians will go at the first sign of labor. My teacher was saying that when she practiced as an L&D nurse she would look around and see who to care for first. She was like, "You know, if a woman's still smiling I knew that it wasn't such a rush. But if there was an orthodox Jewish woman, sitting there with a smile on her face like all is well, I knew this woman needs a room right away, she's gonna have a baby really soon."

One is not more right then the other - Jews would rather be relatively comfortable at home and be in and out of Labor and Delivery, whereas Italians would rather settle in to their L&D room. Who knew?

Maternity Today

I spent today in the nursery, which was so much fun. I got to give a baby his first bath, and get him dressed and bundle him up. It was a real bonding experience.

Then I had my maternity test, which I aced. And after class, I was the last one in my room, and my teacher actually sat down in the desk next to me and talked. Just chatted, about stuff. We talked about Weight Watchers (We ended up in the same meeting) and about how much I'm loving maternity, and can't wait to do it. It was so great. I feel a little bad, because a lot of my class really dislikes her, because she's a tough cookie. She's very strict, and very hard, and has really high expectations, but I love her. I feel like she could be my friend, my mentor.

Then I had my psych test, which I barely studied for, but I'm pretty sure I did well. And then I cut the rest of class, because she wanted us to sit around for an hour before class, and I'm just sooo tired from studying.

Thats all for now. Layla tov.

Readers Beware

I've started my maternity nursing class, as I've mentioned, last week. My warning is this: I went to nursing school so that I could be a midwife. That means that I am already obsessed with my class. So - expect a lot of posts about pregnancy, labor and delivery, post partum, and the newborn.

Today was our first active day of clinical, and it was SO awesome. I was in postpartum, and was lucky enough to spend the whole day with my clinical instructor, who is the clinical nurse specialist and lactation consultant on our floor. We walked around and I felt a couple uteruses, at different stages, which was awesome.

I'm really impressed with the hospital. In most cases, people want to go to the city to go to a great hospital. But the maternity unit at SIUH is unbelievably impressive. One of my patients told me that even if she were to move to the west coast she'd come back to Staten Island to deliver her next child. The doctors are great, the nurses know a TON and are SO sweet.

The only bad part of the day was at the end. And warning - a little gross. Another student did a postpartal assessment of a mother who JUST came up from the delivery room, and she was very swollen - she couldn't close her legs because of the swelling. The student, who is 40-ish said to me, "I'm glad I never had children." Ummm... hello? Swelling goes away. This woman has a child. Get some perspective. I hope she doesn't become a maternity nurse.

Orthodox Jewish Culture

Nursing has gotten really into cultural awareness. However - the textbooks aren't written by people of these different cultures, and so usually the things they write are bastardized form of the truth. At least when it's about Judaism, I can't speak for the other cultures, but I imagine it's true.
I just started my maternity class (which, by the way, is the last one, and the reason I've gone through the others) and, while reading the chapter on cultural awareness, was shocked with the truth, clarity, and conciseness of the Jewish part.

"In Orthodox Judaism, for example, it is a man's responsibility to procreate, but it is a woman's right, not her obligation, to do so. This is because, according to Orthodox Jewish law, the health of the mother, both physically and mentally, is of primary concern, and she should never be obliged to do something that threatens her life."

Impressive, no?

Well, it was a busy week, but I still managed to do the switch - I am currently blogging from the beta version. They main difference for me is the homepage - it's nicer looking. Also, when you go to "Edit Posts" it also shows how many comments, which I don't think regular blogger does.
You can do a lot of fun stuff with your template, which I tried - the coolest thing is the color shuffling tool - it randomizes the color of different aspects of your blog with the colors that you have already chosen - the only issue is that if you changed your template (like I did), you lose those changes. They keep a copy of your old template so you can go back, which I did, because I couldn't figure out how to keep the things I changed (like the comments opening on the page, or showing only new comments) in the new blogger.

So, my busy week... I had my first pediatric nursing test, and got an A (yay!!) which was really exciting. Today I went to an information session at SUNY Downstate for their RN-BSN program. I was really nervous, but I spoke to the credit/gpa evaluator person, and she said that I was "competitive" - which is really Really exciting.

And, of course, all of my classes decided to give papers due over the chaggim, so that's been fun trying to get done, especially since there are NO MORE SUNDAYS.

So, thats what's been happening. I haven't seen my husband for a week because of classes and studying, and tonight is long slichot, so he's gonna be out for a while... maybe we'll get so spend some time together over Rosh Hashana. That would be nice.