This is for every woman I know who is pregnant or plans to ever be.

I guess I have a little rant from yesterday. I love L&D, and still do after yesterday, but I would rather take care of a woman who knows nothing about labor than someone who thinks they know everything. If they do know alot, great for them, its fine to be proactive about your own care. But if you don't know, and you act like you do and try to correct me every 5 seconds, thats when the trouble begins.

I had two moms yesterday that were "fun." One came into triage for an NST and I was the lucky duck who got to triage her. She tried to tell me how to hook her up to the monitor like I didn't know. Then she said, "You have two of those TOCO's." I said, "No I don't." And she kept arguing with me (she got confused apparently because the TOCO which measures her contraction strength is usually blue, while the transducer that picks up the baby's heartbeat is usually grey, but we have blue ones too.) I finally showed her the difference, and she just said, "Oh."

She didn't stop there, no, that didn't slow her down. She looked at the monitor strip and said, "I'm having a contraction!!" I was like, "Uh no thats not a contraction thats from me putting the strap on you and you moving around." She said, "No see its right there."  I wanted to explain to her that contractions don't look like perfect squares (unless you're holding your breath and faking them). But I didn't :)
 
Then she was watching everything I clicked/typed/etc into the computer. She tried to tell me I was spelling one of her meds wrong, so I had to get it out of her bag of meds she brought with her to show her I wasn't spelling it wrong.

She got a little bit better after that, but then I get another mom who doesn't trust any of us one bit. She would ask and ask for juice even though she knew she couldnt have any while she was in labor. So she asked one of the other nurses and when she said no, the girl goes, "I knew that, I was just seeing if you would do it." They don't realize that making every one of the nurses mad isn't exactly to their advantage. After her baby was born, I gave him a bath, did hearing screen, etc. and took him back in her room. I said, "Do you want me to hand him to you?" And she looked me straight in the eye and said, "No I want my mom to hand him to me." I was just thinking okie dokie then whatever.

Then the cops come because she had a restraining order against the FOB and he came up there anyway. Nice.

SO.... the lesson of the day is: pay attention to your care, but don't belittle your nurse or act like you know better (if you don't)!!  It makes their day alot harder because then they dread walking in your room!