Perinatal bereavement

I just finished my training to be a perinatal bereavement counselor for my hospital. Wow! What an intense two days of training! I actually feel like I'm already way ahead of the training, having taking care of so many mothers before, during and immediately after the loss of their babies. I'm certainly not a novice when it comes to pregnancy loss.

It's just amazing how draining the classwork can be. The sharing of stories, both my own experiences listening to other women share their stories. Draining, with a capital D.

Listening to and interacting with multiple spiritual care staff members: Catholic, Protestant, Zen Buddist (!! I didn't know we had one of them on staff !!), Christian, and so forth.

Anyway, I would like to leave all of you with a very interesting and short video: TheDashMovie.

Updates on work and school

Have I really not written a post since last Thursday? Oh my goodness - no, I haven't! I've been so crazy busy with being back at work plus working on finishing up my assignments for this term.

L&D: super duper busy! We have been seeing a whole lot of preterm labor and premature rupture of membranes. I recently had a pre-viable birth, where the baby was not expected to survive the birth. Little one held on and on for almost two hours after she was born. So sad.

I'm pursuing further training at work to become a grief counselor for women who have any type of infant death (IUFD, stillborn, pre-viable babes who die after birth, neonatal deaths). It's going to be two full days of education next month, and then I'll be an official grief counselor. There are several nurses on L&D with this distinction already. I am actually looking forward to learning more about the grief process, and how I can support women and families in their time of need.

School: also super duper busy! I finished up my pharmacology course. WHEW! It was a lot of reading, studying and testing for this course. I learned so, so, so much! As for my midwifery community assessment course ~~ I worked for 10 hours yesterday on writing up my final paper for that class. This paper goes in depth into the Healthy People 2010 maternal child health indicators, and all of the statistics and data analysis of the results. Plus, we had to come up with a plan of how midwifery could help with one of the MCH indicators. I chose reduction of preterm births for my topic. Eh. I have to edit the paper a bit, and fine tune the conclusion before I submit it. 29 pages, including title page and four pages of references. Talk about a big headache.

Next term starts in about 4 weeks. I'm only taking one course, but it's a biggie: Antepartum Care. YEAH!!! Just got my Varney's Midwifery book in the mail yesterday too. I am so ready to dive into the meat and potatoes of my education: the midwifery content.

Bring it on!!!

In rememberance

In memory of all of the angel babies who have recently received their wings.

Fly little ones! You were loved, and will be dearly missed.

First night back to work & all is well

I had my first shift back to work and - like the title suggests - all went well. I volunteered to have someone experiencing an IUFD (intrauterine fetal demise). She did end up delivering her baby on my shift too.

IUFDs can be a give or take type of situation: either it's prolonged and drawn out, trying to induce the labor, or they labor and deliver very quickly. I would imagine that I would prefer the quick labor and birth if I were to be in her shoes. But honestly, who knows what I would feel unless I were actually in that situation? Perhaps I would want more time to process the information that my baby had died? Perhaps I would want to savor as much of the pregnancy as possible before it's conclusion? Or perhaps I would want to just get it all over and done with?

Like I've said before, I don't mind taking care of women having a fetal death. I don't run the other way when I see a diagnosis of "IUFD" on our patient assignment board. I feel like I can give excellent, compassionate care to these women and their families. I also find that I enjoy the challenge of creating tasteful photographs of the babies, with the limited supplies that we have on our unit.

I sometimes find myself thinking that I should go ahead and obtain the bereavement counselor education that is offered once or twice a year at work.

We have these fantastic mold impression kits that we use for fetal demises. When you are unable to get foot prints (which is often the case in the early 2nd trimester losses), the impression kits are perfect. I am able to get some perfect hand and feet impressions on the tiniest of babies with these kits. I also feel that it gives a very nice 3-dimensional object that the families can touch and feel after they experience a fetal loss. It's so much better than a flat 2-dimensional print, I think.

Side note: I need to get moving with more of the 2nd trimester loss fetal wraps. I only have two made. Kudos though to the volunteers who made some small, gender neutral knitted blankets for us! That was a nice surprise to find when I was looking for a small blanket for the baby last night.