Goodbye St. Alphonsus

I am pleased thrilled to announce that I am a stay-at-home mom again!!!!!!!!!  Aug 7th was my last day working OB at St. Alphonsus.  OB nurses have the most stressful job in the world, nearly anyways!   Scott has been in school and I have been working for the last 2 1/2 years, minus two maternity leaves :)  Scott and I felt that I really really needed to be back at home (and I really really wanted to be there too!)  Little ones just don't wait.  So in June, Scott went to work and I worked my final two months.  I am so thankful for the many promptings and a husband willing to sacrifice and postpone schooling for a while and for my dear mother who babysat while I worked those last two months.  I do still work 1-2 days a month at the Weiser Hospital, but for the most part, I am home with my 6 AMAZING, INCREDIBLE, BEAUTIFUL children and LOVING IT!!!!!!!

In the last 2 1/2 years, even though I still feel like a novice OB nurse in so many ways, I made some big "accomplishments".    I earned my national certification in fetal monitoring, I was oriented to PEDS at St. Als and med/surg and some ER at Weiser ( areas I haven't been in since nursing school), passed ACLS, learned 4 computer charting systems, etc etc.  I felt I was always stretched and forced to grow and did in a lot of ways (although I do still feel so inadequate a lot of the time).  BUT I felt my mothering skills hadn't improved.  That I was just maintaining in the area that I always need to be improving in the most.  Everyday, night actually, I went to work it was just so hard to go; my heart wasn't in it- it was back at home.  In the 5 1/2 weeks I have been off, my mothering skills have grown by leaps and bounds.  Happy wonderful children are so much more of an accomplishment than anything I can receive in the work world.  And night shift is so hard on the body!  I have been awake for so many 36++ hour periods over the last 2 1/2 years, nearly once a week.  I drank one Coke during that, had a couple of meltdowns, and a good number of headaches, (and 2 pregnancies),  but for the most part, carried on like normal.  I was blessed in a lot of ways.  I slept really really well when I did get to sleep and always made my hour and 15 minute commute home safely, to name a few.  A friend from work said she was off night shift for 6 months before she began to feel human!  I believe that. (Maybe by Feb I will be able to stay a wake through an entire moving or in the car when Scott is driving! Maybe!)

The last 5 1/2 weeks have flown by.  There was no hard adjustment; it was easy peasy to feel right in place.  There has been no lull or break, of course.  I don't know what I would even begin to do with that :)  No, instead we packed in the last days of summer break and then began homeschooling!   It has been an amazing journey.  I am stretching and growing every day with real accomplishments and I am enjoying and loving being a mother more than ever!  Being a stay at home mom is an incredible blessing that I will never take for granite again!

 Yes those are ALL mine, and NO, I am not crazy- I am the luckiest mama in the whole world!

P.S.  I am thankful for all my great co-workers who answered my millions of questions and for their friendship.  (You are the only ones who can comprehend how stressful work can be in the OB world.  I wish you all the best and hope the new unit is awesome!)