The NIght Shift

So I haven't written for awhile, and I'm not sure why. The only thing I can reckon is that I've been working nights and life is just weird when you sleep all day and work all night for three days in a row, then try to have a normal life again for the rest of the week.

In light of that, I'd like to take a moment to describe life on nights...the highs, the lows, and the dark.

Let's start with a simple overview of the shift. We generally arrive between 6:45 and 7pm, with coffee in hand, though some prefer Mountain Dew or Coke Zero. I'm a triple shot iced Americano kind of girl, with room please.

We all want to know what the "board" looks like, which translates into, "Will I have just one nice, normal labor patient, or should I pee now because I won't have a chance again until I get home in the morning." We change quickly into green OR scrubs that are required for the unit and line up to get our assignments. The day shift folks are only too happy to hand over their patients. We get report on our assignment (or assignments, if its busy) and get to work.

Whether its labor, pre-ecclampsia, or cesarean, there is an unspoken rule on night shift that you work together and you always always always know that someone else is watching out for you. Its such a relief when a baby crumps on the monitor to turn around and see 2 or 3 other nurses stepping into your room and pulling on gloves to get things right again.

If things aren't too crazy, it can get pretty quiet around 3 or 4 am, and we find ourselves sitting together at one of the nurses stations, wrapped in blankets b/c its cold, drinking something, and chatting away, always eyeballing the monitors to tell us how each baby and mommy is doing.

Around 5am is when things start to get silly. People are tired, but we know that only 2 more hours are left until daylight, and better still, shift change. Someone will make a "that's what she said" joke, or start quoting their favorite movie lines. Another RN will join in with some story about their patient, like how room 2 just pooted on the nurse's hand during a cervical check, or how room 7 spit out a 10 pound baby with 2 pushes. You hear phrases like "vaginal bypass" or "hosed" or "FLK" (which stands for funny looking kid). Almost everyone has a story from their night.

By 6, we're pretty much home free, except for that one lucky nurse who will have a change of shift delivery that leaves her with loads of documentation to catch up on. It happens to everyone, and if the patient is sweet, then we usually don't mind at all. I mean, its another life brought into the world, right? So what if its at 6:58.

The day team starts to arrive at 6:45 or so, looking fresh and clean, compared to us, who are ragged and barely able to formulate a thought. Sometimes I find myself waddling around the unit because I'm too tired to pick my feet up any more than I have to. Usually I have to sit down and really think through all my charting and the work I did to make sure its all been done. It seems easier to forget stuff at 4:45am than at 4:45pm. Why do you think that is???

By 7:15am, I'm usually out the door and heading to my car, the sunshine hurting my eyes that have grown accustomed to the dark halls and rooms on the unit. Now that I park in the same place, I don't have to wander around, trying to remember where my car is, which happened a few of my first nights.

Driving home is always a time for prayer, mostly to stay awake and not kill anyone on the road. I usually call home and talk to my parents because they are interesting, and Chris is still asleep. Once I couldn't get a hold of anyone, so I called my friend Michelle, another nurse who had worked that night and was also driving home. She didn't answer, and I left her this ridiculous message about struggling to stay awake at the wheel and how I hoped she was still awake and not asleep since she didn't answer her phone. She called me back a few minutes later, worried that I'd be dead in a ditch because she didn't answer and I had no one to talk to. I was eating toast at home when she called, so I was ok.

Then I sleep all day, usually with the help of Benadryl or Ambien. Ambiem made me hallucinate once, so its been Benadryl since then, and there are no more can can dancers in my room nor has the laundry started coming to life.

Then I get up. Then I eat, then I go back to the hospital to do it all over again.

So there's the night shift in a nutshell. I wish everyone could experience it at least once. Its a joy and its hard and its fun and its exhausting. But I love it, and I'm glad to be there. The patients are (usually) great, and the staff is even greater. That combination is worth staying up for.