Happy Nurses Week

I’m sneaking this one in at the end of the week, but better late than never.

Happy Nurses Week to all of the nurses out there. Especially to the ones who helped to make Hunter’s time here as comfortable as possible. It takes a special kind of person to be a nurse and even more special kind person to be a NICU nurse.

These nurses are the mothers to our children when we are not able to be there with them. They know our babies as well as we do and treat them as if they are their own.

I was very lucky to meet some incredible nurses during our stay at Mt. Sinai and I will never forget them. They kept me sane.

Having Xander at home made it difficult for me to be at the hospital with Hunter as much as I wanted to be, so it was quite often that I would spend the day with Xander and head to the hospital and spend the night with Hunter. It’s much quieter in the NICU at night, well as quiet as it can be with the constant dinging of alarms and sounds of machines, so you have more time to chat with the nurses which is nice because staring into an isolette at your baby that you can’t just pick up, can be draining.

The dedication that these ladies have is just so inspiring. You can always tell which ones truly love their jobs and put their hearts into it. We were so lucky to meet so many of these nurses.

In the NICU at Mt. Sinai you have the opportunity to have “Primary Nurses”, which are nurses that are dedicated to your baby. So whenever they are on shift they will be assigned to your baby. We had two Primary Nurses, and then one unofficial Primary Nurse who’s Primary Baby happened to be two bed spaces down from Hunter, so she often got assigned Hunter as well. These ladies along with a few others became my saviors. Hunter’s surrogates moms when I wasn’t there. I never felt like a pain or that I was in the way when they were working. When I wasn’t able to make the trip in they were just a phone call away and ready to update me with how he was doing; how much he had eaten, what meds he had gotten, what his stats and temps were, and what the doctor’s plans were for the shift.

It was our Primary Nurse that first asked me if I would like to actually change Hunter’s diaper and take his temperature for the first time. It was our Primary Nurse that initiated and coordinated our first hold, and most of them that followed. I always new that if she was working I would be more likely to be able to hold Hunter that day. She didn’t make it out to be a pain to organize all the people that it took to just get Hunter out and into my arms. It was not an easy task, but as long as he was having a good day it was likely to happen if she was on shift. For that I will forever be grateful to her. She gave me so many memories with Hunter that I might not have had if she hadn’t been our Primary Nurse. So for that I thank her.

The nurses make sure that the parents are also looking after themselves and taking breaks to eat and time away from the NICU, to keep them sane. It was a nurse that allowed us to have more then our allotted visitors at one time so that we could get a picture of 5 generations. It was the nurses who thought to bring me a drink of water when I’d been holding Hunter for over an hour and couldn’t move for fear that I would pull out a tube.

I will never be able to thank all of them enough for everything that they did for us during our NICU stay. Right up until the end. Because of the nurses I have pictures and molds of Hunter’s hands and feet. Memories that I might not have had without them.

If you know a nurse make sure to thank them for what they do, because they deserve it!