I made an instagram post earlier about how I wanted to make a heartfelt post about nurses week but I was too busy working to write one…well now I have some free time, a warm cup of coffee & a chocolate cookie so let’s begin.

I never thought about being a nurse until I was 22. I went to college for elementary education, dropped out of college, quite literally travelled the world, and then decided to get my life together. I was young, and would often state “I just want to love God and love people” when people asked me about my life plans. A good (and smart) friend told me that I should think about going back to school and have some sort of plan. I got mad at her and ignored the advice. A few weeks later, I thought about it some more. I really wanted to live overseas and I knew that in order to get into some countries I would have to have a plan, a reason why I would be there. I thought about how education is truly a gift and a privilege. I also thought about what would get me through college the quickest and thought about two options—going back for education, or becoming a nurse. At that point I knew I had tried the whole education thing and didn’t really like it, so I thought we would try the whole nursing thing.

I decided to jump into an LPN program at a local community college and I remember on the first day of clinicals ,in a nursing home, being so incredibly terrified of even waking a patient up. I didn’t know how to do it. We were tasked with one thing—waking our patient up and getting them dressed and I was near tears just thinking about it. Thankfully a friend of mine who had experience as a CNA helped me with it, and we got the deed done.

It wasn’t until my second semester in clinicals where I finally realized that this was the job for me. It was my clinical instructor and her passion for nursing that really encouraged me. I don’t remember her name, but I remember her encouraging us to jump all in. She advocated for us to help with things, she got us in to see cool surgeries, and she instilled in us that if we saw the call light go off, we were to immediately go in there and help the patient with whatever they needed.

I graduated with my LPN in December of 2015, and moved to Columbia in 2016. I started my ADN program that year, and graduated the following spring. I applied for both the pediatric floor, and the women’s service line. I didn’t get the peds job (and I cried about it, lol), but decided to take the offer for maternal newborn.

I started out strong on my first day by getting lost finding the floor and asking security where to go (who ended up escorting me to the floor, how embarrassing). I will forever stand by my statement that nursing school prepares you to pass the NCLEX, and your first year of being a nurse prepares you to be a nurse. I look back on my first year of nursing (which I also wrote about here), with fond memories. Jenna and I getting a donut nearly every day, building great relationship with my coworkers & getting my baby deer legs under me as I slowly began to feel more confident as a nurse.

The first year as a nurse was hard though, I made plenty of mistakes, didn’t sleep properly for like a year (I kept having work dreams of forgetting about a patient), and constantly felt like I had no idea what I was doing. For the longest time I didn’t understand the difference between an attending and a resident so THAT was a fun time.

I stopped working when Hezzy was born, and we moved to Vietnam for a year. I really did think my nursing career was over as I entered motherhood. Jokes on me, I missed it too much and decided to come back part time after Naomi turned one. About a year later Nathan and I decided to switch roles a little bit, and he stayed home with the kids and I worked full time. I dipped my toes into the NICU world and fell in love with the sweet little feeders & growers that I got to hang out with. After a year of that, I jumped back into full time maternal newborn nursing, and that’s where I’ve been since.

My days are full of fundal rubs (if you haven’t experience this, be thankful you haven’t), and teaching new moms how to feed their baby. It is full of helping new moms up to the bathroom, and teaching dads how to swaddle their babies. It’s baby footprints, and warm blankets and scrubbing the gunk out of their hair (nothing is more satisfying). It’s watching for signs of pre-eclampsia, and educating parents, and looking into their sleep-deprived postpartum eyes and telling them that they can do this.

Some call the post-partum floor “soft nursing”, which to some it may feel like it—most of our patients are generally healthy, they just had a baby. However, it’s also dealing with patients who have experienced deep loss, watching parents cry as I wheel their baby to the NICU, social issues galore, and running around like a chicken with my head cut off most of the day. Somedays its struggling to get a lunch break, the only food being saltines and chocolate I steal from the social work office (thank you by the way). Phone call after phone call of trying to advocate for my patients. Don’t get me started on some of the medsurg patients we also see (medusrg nurses—you deserve a whole lot).

I feel so grateful to have a job that I feel so passionately about. I truly do believe that this is where God has me. I find purpose in taking care of my patients to the glory of God. It is with great honor that I hold the title “RN” and there is nothing I would rather be doing.

People have strong opinions about the medical system in general and while I sure as heck am not going to delve into that, what I do know is that if you ever find yourself or your loved one in the hospital, you want a good nurse. A good nurse can make such a huge difference. My girl, mother Teresa, said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

To the nurses—know that your ‘drop in the ocean’ is making a difference. The warm blankets and ice water, advocating for your patient’s pain, taking a deep breath before you enter your patient’s room and choosing to slow down and smile (despite the chaos happening outside of the room) and taking the time to really make sure your patients are cared for is HUGE. You are appreciated, and the world would be a whole lot less beautiful without your care.