Chronicals of a NICU Nurse

The last few days I've been feeling down in the dumps. At the same time I am feeling extremely selfish for having these feelings. You all know what I do for a living. I work as a Neonatal Intensive Care Nurse. My work can be very emotionally challenging at times and also very rewarding at others. Sat. morning I drove home from work in tears, thoughts just raced through my head. My heart was aching for the pt. I just left. Its so hard to leave work when your patient is so critical, I feel I can't or shouldn't leave, I feel I need to stay, its not fare that I get to leave and just carry on with life, go home and play with my perfectly healthy boys, its like having unfinished business. Its so hard to run your ass off for 12hours straight exhausting all the energy I have in effort to help save a baby, a life that has barley begun and so close to ending. You have to be strong, you have to numb yourself from the constant sobbing you hear a few feet from yourself, a mother, begging, pleading with God, with anybody, to let her first born, her only child survive. The baby they have tried for years to get and now here it is weighing just over a pound. Its so hard when I can see my own boys lying there, I try not to but I do think about it, it does happen. The baby blue in color, bloated with edema, multiple foreign lines and wires connected to this little life, a machine the size of a full grown man breathing for the baby, a body the size of a dollar bill. Its chest vibrating from high frequency ventilation, so unnatural its disturbing, monitors beeping with alarm, decreasing heart rate and oxygen saturation's, a plummeting blood pressure, Parents sobbing and the baby getting more blue. I hate it when I look up and see the mother and tears build up in my own eyes, that large knot in my throat wont go away and the ache in my chest. I am so sad and yet my pain is nothing remotely close to what she is going trough. Its not easy seeing a baby in states that I have. I find it hard to talk to anybody about this. These feelings I have is why I have been feeling selfish, why should I be worried about my feelings ? These poor parents are losing their baby! But at the same time I cant help it. Prematurity is a problem that not too many people are aware of. I mean yeah, people know it exists but they haven't seen what I have seen. A lot of people think of a preemie as a 4-5 pound baby. To me, that's a huge baby! They haven't seen that baby weighing 500 grams (just over a pound ) in fluid volume overload, or cynotic because of lack of oxygen, their skin slothing off because its so premature its barley there. They don't know what NEC is (where the bowel dies and can perforated its contents into the abdominal wall causing a fatal infection) or seen that baby suffering through the infection in will to survive. Or worse of all a baby taking its last breath. I don't wish anybody ever to have to see these things, its just hard to talk about my experiences when nobody has been in my shoes. Its like the parents who lost the babies, Nobody knows their pain, nobody. Your probably thinking if I cant handle my job I should find another? It's not like that at all, it just adds up over time and you need to get it all out, like my good cry on the ride home sat. morning. The greatest times are seeing a 23wk baby born with her eyes fused shut, open them one at a time for the first time, or helping a mother hold her baby for the first time when he is now 20 days old, seeing that micro preemie go home with its family after 120 long days in the NICU, getting updates from all the babies I've cared for, pictures, emails, phone calls, cards. Knowing I made a difference in someones life, knowing I have impacted them in a positive way in either a good or bad outcome , knowing I did all I could do for the sake of somebody else, that's why I do it.