L&D

Not so much my thing...I mean, there's something to be said for be well rounded when one is in health care, but I think I'm far too sarcastic/pessimistic to be a labor & delivery nurse...Sister Claris and I spent a few hours after lunch touring the maternity wards of various kinds, and one of the midwives said what I've heard a million times before..."I was a nurse and then became a midwife and never went back to nursing because as a nurse I put a lot of work and effort in and people still died, people were very sick, and here, you take care of the mother and then the baby and then you send everyone home happy." Yep, definitely not my thing. See, the strange thing is, everybody talks about how happy it is and then no one is actually enjoying their job it seemed...there was this almost palpable distaste or distrust or condescension or something that oozed out of the staff in these wards, it was like a different world down there...and they were all standing around gawking at the white girl, which annoyed me thoroughly and so I started staring back and then they looked the other way...that's what I thought. hrumphf. can you tell I'm in a bit of a mood? Anyways, the tour included, "here's the blue bucket, and then here's the green bucket, and here's the telephone and here's the beds where women rest after delivery...." very boring. Here's the other thing...I've never done any maternity care in my own country even, my only maternity experience was in Israel, which was interesting, but I wasn't really even very good at it there...I have a vivid memory of one of the midwives who was one of our teachers repetitively telling me to stop crossing my arms, that it came off the wrong way and made me seem unapproachable or disinterested or something...yep, definitely not my cup of tea. But the cool thing is, it kind of solidified my enjoyment of what I do have experience in in the field of nursing, the things that are my cup of tea.