Night float updates

I have so many stories to tell that I'm not sure where to start. For sure, there really isn't time to write! At the moment, I'm on night float, which means that most nights are 13-15 hours of what varies from intermittent visits to the floor for labor checks, to nights where the moment-to-moment is filled with with frantic running and paperwork and emergency c-sections for abrupting placentas. Tonight is more along the lines of the first category. I almost hate to say it; superstition is strong on the OB floor and nothing brings in the labors like the words "It's sure quiet tonight."

My favorite moments are about 4 am, when the nurses are bringing the babies in to the nursery to be weighed, and sometimes fed. I get to snuggle little nuggets to my heart's content, and give them back when it's convenient.

I'm convinced, altogether, that I have the coolest job. It's a little scary at times--I feel overwhelmed and I hate it when I make mistakes. I get frustrated with my limitations and I would love to jump ahead and do more. But even when I'm tired, I'm content. It's good.

Nate is here, as well, and he's settling into life in Tennessee, with me. We're counting down to the wedding and I'm trying to fit planning and buying into this wacky schedule. But the best nights are when it's slow and he can come in to eat dinner with me here. He's pretty wonderful.

Time for more labor checks. There will be more stories about cervixes or cervici or whatever the plural is, and they'll be gross and horrifying and funny, but for now my update is that I really like my life here. It's going to be a good one. I like the people I'm with and I love Nathan, and what I'm learning to do is amazing. Off to catching ALL the babies!

I'm a Doctuh

The movers have taken all of my things and most of the furniture. My classmates have scattered, many towing spouses and small squirmy bits of humanity behind them. I gave up the key to my apartment and home is now mostly wherever Nate is at. What an odd, in-between place.

Now for all the updating; I have graduated. I'm a doctor. I'm not exactly sure what that means, yet, or how I'm supposed to feel about it, because it's still very surreal. At this time next month I will be, most likely, sitting in my new apartment and petrified because I will know that, come morning, I and hundreds of others like me will be unleashed upon the hospitals in a wave of terror that is the July introduction of the new interns. Stay out of the hospitals in the summer--I mean it. You'll probably die. We don't want you to die, but we don't really know what we're doing, and accidents happen. O_o

Oh, and on top of this, I'm wedding planning. Yes, a wedding, one of those affairs with sparkly whitish dresses and fancy cake that nobody really likes, and a set of high heels that I'm already regretting even though I haven't actually purchased them. I'm to the point where I'm seeing my wedding colors everywhere and Pinterest has become more of a plague than a help, but seriously, this guy. This guy. We're figuring out the next several months of long distance and how to merge two lives together, and it isn't easy. At times it's downright frazzling. The joy in the experience, though, is realizing again and again that this is the person you've picked to share the rest of your life with, and "you done good."

In two weeks, I'll be back in the south, carving out my own little place in the Tennessee mountains, catching babies, and sharing hair-raising stories that are going to put Scrubs to shame. There will be laughter, there will most definitely be tears. Stay tuned!