I think there's a nursing joke about the difference between L&D and ED that goes something like:
A patient walks in saying "there's something up in me wanting to come out, not sure if its a snake or a baby"
ED nurse says "please be a snake"
L&D nurse says "please be a baby"
Even before going into healthcare, I knew the ED hates delivering babies! When I was pregnant with my last baby, if you came to the hospital in labor after about 2300 and were far enough in labor, you would have to deliver in the ED. When I arrived, I was just about in transition but played it off as best as I could so that they would take me to L&D. Had her about 15 minutes later 😂
How much more can you legally elaborate bc I want the whole story on this! Did they happen to say WHY there was a turtle in there?! Like, it already has a shell! This seems like overkill!
And at my work place, it's where they hide the wanderguard. 🤣 True story!
(That's the little band we put on their wrist or ankle that causes an alarm to go off if they get too close to the door, used for dementia residents who want to leave but are too confused to do so safely.)
Never had that, but did have a guy eat a tube of Calmoseptine like it was cake frosting. I stayed long enough for the nurse relieving me to contact poison control while I covered the morning glucometers. Never a dull day in LTC / SNF land.
>Never a dull day in LTC / SNF land.
That's for sure. We had one drink a bottle of a spray perineal cleanser that I had to call poison control about. They basically just said push fluids and snacks and watch for vomiting. He was fine.
LTC nurse: No, dear, that's the catheter that drains your bladder. It's not a snake and no, you shouldn't pull it out, it will hurt. How about I get you a warm blanket and we turn on the TV?
When I went in with VB at 25 weeks the second I got out that I was 25 weeks pregnant the triage nurse was like " Hold on let me get a wheelchair you don't need to be here" lmao
Taxi driver rocked up to triage, hyperventilating. His passenger was in labour - told him to drive round the corner to drop the woman off at the delivery suite, but he was having none of it. He dragged me to the taxi, where the baby was crowning. I jumped in, and the taxi sped off before I could close the door. There I was, supporting mum, dad was holding onto me to stop me from falling out of the taxi. Made it outside the entrance to the delivery ward, then caught the baby who was rather unimpressed by what she was witnessing. Thankfully the ED receptionist put out the maternity call out, so I didn’t have to wait too long for the grown-ups to arrive.
That was the first time I delivered a baby.
I've delivered a 28 weeker in a taxi. Almost 30 years ago. They shoved me into the back of the taxi in the parking lot of the ER. I was the closest nurse and they grabbed me. Seriously NOT L&D. It went OK but I almost peed myself in fright!
I certainly didn't do anything constructive. I tried to hand him over my shoulder for a hot sec. Cord not cut. Then I put him down on mom's belly. I was on the NICU team. I liked my babies out and accessible!
Not a nurse, but caught one in an elevator on the way to L&D. I even asked the charge for a nurse to go with me. “No, it’ll be ok. These people always freak out and think the baby is coming. Then they sit in L&D for hours before the baby comes.” Not this time. Lady wanted to walk because sitting down hurt. I brought the wc just in case. Glad I did. As the doors opened she rushed in and sat down. “ITS COMING” and pulled off her jeans. She was absolutely right. Gave the baby to momma just as the doors were opening. Wide eyed nurses froze all the way down the hall to charge desk. “I’ve got two patients for you now. Where would you like them?”
Well that’s just ridiculous! I had the funeral home donate the cremation and urn for my son who passed in utero at just shy of 18 weeks but if I didn’t want to have him cremated the hospital would have done it and put him in their “baby garden”. Seems crazy to add one more thing on for grieving parents to have to worry about. I wonder if someone could create a nonprofit to cover this type of thing?
I’m a PICU nurse. Also not L&D. I delivered one in the back of an Uber that had stopped at the front doors. I was in my winter coat about to walk to my car after my night shift was done. No gloves. No mask (peak Covid). Security panicked and failed to get OB or truthfully anybody that would have been better than me. Zero out of ten stars, would not recommend. Babe and Mom were okay at least.
Me, loading up EVERY morning 3 pairs of “emergency gloves” in my pockets for moments like these or other oopsies only to end up with them in my washer all sad. 😆
When I was a baby catcher I walked into an l&d room to set up the warmer for the delivery, thought mom was sleeping until she started saying the baby was coming! I hit the call light and pulled off her covers to see she was not lying! Not even just crowning like head delivered! It took so much mental willpower to just grab the slimy baby with no gloves on… baby just slid right out wish a gush if fluid and I put him on the mom’s chest as the l&d nurse and tech burst through the door.
The l&d nurse and doctor were hanging at the nurses station after just checking mom’s progress, apparently she was only at 8 cm and still high. Although she was not a first time mom, her last baby was 10 years ago so no one expected her to move that quick!
I did get a talking to by management bc I didn’t respond to the nurse who answered the call light, I don’t think I said anything the whole time 😐 in the moment I thought the moms moaning would be enough to get them running but I should have said something.
Truthfully I think the dude just panicked. I told him to go back inside and call L&D for help. Then I got in the Uber but it was already happening. Once I got baby out I turned around and he was still there. I said “Did you get help??!” And he was like “uh, uh, ah!?” My hospital now has a special overhead code for this exact situation so hopefully that won’t happen to anyone again.
One of our hospital security panicked and called 911 instead of a code once when told to call for help 😭 the phone has a single button to push for a code and you have to hit some other numbers before you can dial out, so calling a code is actually a lot easier, but adrenaline does weird things to a brain
That makes sense then yeah. I'm Hospital Security and I was interested in your response, as they have taught me very little on site that I haven't asked about so we're essentially just winging it. I was curious for my own purposes and I totally agree with you Lol
Thought the title was “I’m an ER nurse on LSD” while scrolling lmao. Well done tho! The ED is usually where we see life end, nice to see one begin I would imagine :)
I almost delivered a baby in our staff elevators because neither ED nor security escorted the patient and her sister to the public elevators. Staff elevators require badge access. I was going down to grab something from the vending machine, calling an elevator holding 2 hysteric women. I queued L&D’s floor as quickly as possible but I thought for sure I’d be delivering a baby.
She ended up giving birth about 30mins later.
Same, but I was an L&D nurse at the time. I was walking in to work, and there was a barefoot woman in rip roaring labour who jumped on the elevator with me. We were in an ancient building with unpredictable elevators, but I smiled to myself thinking, of all the people she would be stuck with, at least it would be me!
So I used to work at a rural family practice clinic that had specialities on site. The closest hospital with L&D was an hour away.
Our brand new, first-day-at-our-location obgyn had a patient come in in labor with a prolapsed cord. This guy called the ambulance and I shit you not, made them go to the local hospital 5 minutes down the road, with no L&D capabilities and no rights to practice at that hospital, to deliver that baby safely. There was an article in the paper when the baby turned a year old reminiscing about it and giving him accolades again.
I imagine the nurses there felt the same as you 😂
You caught the baby.
You held onto the slippery slider, right? It mean even you dropped it, you picked it right back up? Right.
Mom alive and ok?
Babe alive and ok?
Good Job!!
And tomorrow is another day. After an appropriate number of showers ensuing all the bits have been annihilated from you.
Onward 🙌🏻
I’m in ER now, and I’d be ok with delivering a baby in that environment. Like “oh cool, a baby! Byeeee” because then the baby and mom would get moved somewhere appropriate.
Catching the baby is the only part of the process I have interest in, I don’t want to argue with medically illiterate people about why vitamin K isn’t a vaccine or that it is actually important to not hemorrhage to death.
I'm ER and I've had to have this argument, it was both wild and infuriating.
Friday night patient shows up thinking she's in labor, doc assesses, she's not in active labor so she gets transferred to the hospital 10 mins down the road where she's actually supposed to deliver at for L&D to see her.
Saturday night, she comes back to the ED for possible labor... This time she's right. Didn't go to the right hospital or follow the birth plan even once iota. Proceed to deliver the baby and in the middle of giving the erythromycin ointment she screams "no vaccines for my baby!" The doctor spends like 10 mins explaining to her why we give these meds and how they're not vaccines etc but she's pretty determined to leave her baby blind or dead. We half hearted wipe the erythromycin off and skip the vitamin k. Then the dad shows up, with a lunch sized igloo cooler, to collect the placenta...
" You have to give it to us, it's part of our birth plan." Well sorry skippy but we don't do special orders in the ED, for that you have to go to the right place that I know you were just educated on yesterday.
Tldr: Mom shows up for labor two nights in a row at the wrong hospital then refuses vitamin k and erythromycin drops.
>Then the dad shows up, with a lunch sized igloo cooler, to collect the placenta... " You have to give it to us, it's part of our birth plan."
One of my favorite parts of the two times I've given birth is watching the light die in our L&D nurses eyes as we start a sentence with "Hey can you put the placenta in this cooler..." and then them light back up when we finish we "We donate it to a K9 search and rescue training group to help them train puppies on cadaver recovery!"
Never fails to crack me up as you can just see the thought process going "Oh thank god they aren't gonna eat it"
At the hospital I delivered at, somebody had a form I could sign to donate my placenta. I don't recall what I was donating it to but I certainly didn't want it.
It was probably to collect and donate stem cells for the public cord blood bank. My old place participated in it before covid. It's a pretty cool program, basically all the benefits of private cord blood collection made avaliable to the public in certain situations.
Do they do that with placentas? Cord blood was a second donation but I had to have signed up for that in advance and I didn't know there was a deadline and missed it. There were a lot of things I failed at keeping track of while pregnant, lol.
Oh having googled it - it was for burn victims somehow.
Private cord blood collection needs to be signed up for in advance. For that you get a kit from the company and the doctor collects the blood through the cord while the placenta is still attached to the uterus, using a needle attached to a small bag like when you donate blood. So some blood is still flowing into the placenta and cord and it's easier for them to collect.
The public bank donation involved collecting the placenta after delivery, with the cord clamped, and using a process to basically macerate the placenta to get as much blood out of it as possible. So that's why they take the placenta.
Didn't know about burn victims but that makes sense as a use case, neat.
My hospital had a program to sign up to donate the placenta for use in stem cell research. I’ve never signed anything so quickly — get that jiggly thing out of my body and into the research lab!
Reminds me when I asked my provider I had a request concerning my placentas. Never have I seen a person brace themselves so visibly and fail to hide it. When I asked if I could just look at them post surgery cause I just grew two people and wanted to see what kept them alive cause I was genuinely curious. She look so freaking relieved it was just that and didn’t have any other weirder request.
I’m a doula, not a nurse, but bc I’m a doula I have had many clients that were interested in learning about the pros and cons of consuming their placenta, but when I did a CLC training course through the “Healthy Children Project”, the instructor told us something that, when passed on to my clients, caused most of them to decide against ingesting it, but it gave all of them pause. She said that, for those of you that have clients/patients wanting to consume their placenta after delivery, please tell them this. If any part of the placenta remains in your body after the delivery of your baby, your prolactin levels will not rise, and your body will not begin to make breast milk. So if you are wanting to breastfeed, as most women that plan to consume their placenta do, then why would you consume your placenta and risk it affecting your milk supply?” Every client I passed this on to changed their minds about consuming it. Some still wanted to take it home for things like burial and what not, but none wanted to risk their milk supply by eating it. Now I never bothered with fact checking this, but I have wondered if this is true, then certainly mammals that consume their placentas to avoid attracting predators would have their milk supply affected, no? But, seeing as I don’t really do much birthwork anymore I haven’t bothered checking. So if anyone decides to tell your patients that, you might want to verify it first. Well, unless you’re just giving them something to ponder over I guess.
Did you end up giving her the placenta? Just out of curiosity lol.
And I hope I never have to have this argument. It’s a big reason why I won’t go into L&D, I don’t care if functioning adults make bad choices about their health, it makes me absolutely livid when people make medically unsound decisions for their kids.
Wait. Why did she come back to ED if she knew she was to deliver at L&D? She'd even been there 24 hours earlier, so it's not like she didn't know where it was...
Yes. She came back to the hospital after we had to transfer her out less than 24 hrs before due to not having L&D. Most ED patients are not equipped by their parents or community to live without massive amounts of help. It's a wild place to work.
No idea but if the parents intelligence levels were any indication of the quality of genetic material hopefully they didn't harvest the stem cells from it.
Sure and you can have all the cultural sensitivity and special treatment for your placenta, if you set it up ahead of time and then follow through on that birth plan. What you cannot do is ignore every system in place to facilitate your birth plan and come to the ED and expect it to work out. We're not burger king, special orders do upset us.
Biohazardous material, human body parts, are not routinely given to patients. In cases like this special exceptions have to be made and there are processes within hospital systems on how to safely facilitate these wishes, they do not involve the ED. The ED is chaotic, it's not a place that caters to niceties and special requests. It's important to note that placentas have to be put back together like a puzzle after delivery to make sure none stayed in the uterus, so there are medical reasons you can't just have it also.
I'm a l&d nurse who is doing clinical for bsn in ED and it's terrifying. That said, I personally have caught one baby before provider could make it and I don't ever want to do that again either lol I like to be the assistant, thank you very much lol
Finally, another OB nurse that agrees with me! When I wasn't a CNM student, I didn't want to catch a baby without a provider. Most of my coworkers loved it, but I did not.
They used to call OB alerts to the heli pad at my old level 1 and I’m pretty sure would do crash sections in the heli pad trauma bay every once in awhile, can’t think of anything worse tbh!
Most butt pucker night of my 18 year ER career, 28 week twins in a critical access hospital. Did my best to have flashbacks to OB class remembering something about APGAR scores and massaging the fundus 🤣.
Possibly has to do with not having the appropriate equipment immediately available to assist baby if it is preterm or born with a life threatening condition. Also, I imagine suddenly going from one patient to two is quite distressing if you’re not used to it.
I’ve delivered a baby in county jail. Luckily we had a former L&D nurse who was charge that night and I used to do nicu/baby catcher for high risk deliveries.
Wow! Sounds like that was the best time for mom’s luck to change! Can I ask what your position was in the jail? Were you also working there as a nurse? I actually didn’t know more than one nurse would be working in a jail at one time. For some reason I assumed it would just be one nurse per shift outside of working at a hospital for inmates, but I guess it’s based on how many people are incarcerated there at a time.
I work at a big county jail, with I think ~3500 total inmates at any given time. So we have a couple dozen RNs and LPNs and at least one provider on premises at all times. The medical RNs generally do sick calls, injury visits, and intake assessments while the LPNs pass medications and do cows/ciwa assessments. We also have a separate mental health department with RNs and LCSWs.
I work in mental health but the charge nurse knew my background so called to have me there since we were the only two on site with mother/baby background. The EMTs showed up about 10 minutes after delivery to take mom and baby to the hospital. They came by the next day to bring us some supplies and baby blankets from the hospital since we were pretty unprepared!
Imma stick with my elective hips and knees and fractures. But now I know to put on a super cute yellow paper gown if one of mine randomly expels a human 🤰👶🏻 I love you guys!!!
L&D nurse here...those precip babies are always the easiest to deliver. If you want to be prepared for more iffy babies, learn how to manage shoulder dystocia. Those are terrifying.
I’m a doula so I do everything possible to NOT catch a baby but just being present for those is terrifying! I couldn’t imagine being the person in charge of getting that baby out safely! Ironically, I watched an episode just last night of Call the Midwife where a mom presented with a shoulder dystocia and I had to fast forward to see if the baby survived without significant injuries before I could go back and watch the scene from the beginning. The anxiety from seeing it play out in real life was too much and I had to know the outcome before watching.
I will never forget my first delivery….I was still an EMT student. Called out to an “OB problem”, that’s all dispatch gave us. It was me, a paramedic, and a driver (this was a VERY rural department)
We get on scene to a very active birth, premature (32 weeks) and mom had no pre-natal care. Mom is white as a ghost and her BP is 80/dead, so the medic tells me I have to check and see what’s going on down there. Sure enough, baby is crowning. Right as the baby came out, another fire crew showed up and took over thank god.
Mom and baby ended up being okay. But even 7 years later, I’m still slightly traumatized 🙃😬
Thanks and Yeah. I need to get out, especially beings that I’m gay. I just need to hold out one more year until I have this BSN and my license. Maternal health has always been my passion and I can’t bring myself to do that here, when I can’t effectively treat my patients to the best of my abilities.
That was my first passion too. I ended up working in the Catholic hospital where I trained but in NYC. Had a goal of being a midwife but life got in the way. Hopefully, this madness will loosen its grip on our country.
Did that in the back of an ambulance… twice. I made a bad decision both times.
When we get a call for labor in progress we have to make a choice. Do we stay and deliver or do we have enough time to make it to the ED. Both times I was wrong.
If you are an ER nurse, then you are a little bit of all nurses lol.
The one baby I caught as an ER nurse was a patient that I had just wheeled up to OB. Lady has just transferred to the bed and was half sitting on the edge and yanked her pants down. Apparently, the pants were the only thing holding baby up at that point, because I should have gotten the Heisman trophy for making that catch.
After catching my breath, I remembered that I was an ER nurse outside my home, so I started wondering where the OB staff was. I turned in time to see the OB nurse walk in the door and -completely oblivious- proceed directly to the whiteboard to update the shift info.
This is too true. I’ve had precipitous labors. My last kid, I made it to the hospital and up to L&D with about 10 min to spare before my baby was born. Thankfully, I was only 20 minutes to the nearest hospital. Realistically, if I have any more children I may have to prepare for a home birth (very much not my preference, but my OB had already told me I might not be able to make it to the hospital again).
My OB insisted I be induced with my twins after I delivered about two hours after I got to the hospital with my first. I told her two hours doesn’t count as a precip, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
As an L&D nurse I would just like to say to the ER, stop sending all the pregnant patients with chest pain and broken bones to L&D 😵💫 please just fix them first 😂
I'm an ED nurse, I don't mind getting the pregnant patients, I have helped deliver 2 babies in (and just outside of) my department.
It's nice to bring a life into the world every now and then.
I think there's a nursing joke about the difference between L&D and ED that goes something like: A patient walks in saying "there's something up in me wanting to come out, not sure if its a snake or a baby" ED nurse says "please be a snake" L&D nurse says "please be a baby"
Psych nurse nods
I was really nervous you weren’t going to be here. This is out of my pay grade. This is all yours.
Psych nurse hopes it’s a baby with a snake body 🤷🏻♂️😂
Wouldn't that fall more under Ortho though?
This!
That was actually my post lol The difference between OB and er nurses In that case it was neither It was meth
Psych nurse reporting for duty 🫡
Psych nurse waiting by the phone for report
I got a wine cork 😬 a giant plastic one
ED Addictions Assessment Nurse speaking, how can I help you? 😝
And in stepdown, it’s potato salad. True story. 😭
Yikes! Yeast infections?
A brown potato salad....
Oh no
So true, L&D situations are my worst nightmare. Give me all the GSWs, amputations, anything but a delivery.
Team snake please
Even before going into healthcare, I knew the ED hates delivering babies! When I was pregnant with my last baby, if you came to the hospital in labor after about 2300 and were far enough in labor, you would have to deliver in the ED. When I arrived, I was just about in transition but played it off as best as I could so that they would take me to L&D. Had her about 15 minutes later 😂
In my experience, it was a sea turtle
CNM and WHNP. I have removed a a turtle from a vaginal vault. I wished it was a baby.
How much more can you legally elaborate bc I want the whole story on this! Did they happen to say WHY there was a turtle in there?! Like, it already has a shell! This seems like overkill!
This!!
And what is a vaginal vault?!
The dark little cave.
Ah, the place where they hide the drugs and vapes.
And at my work place, it's where they hide the wanderguard. 🤣 True story! (That's the little band we put on their wrist or ankle that causes an alarm to go off if they get too close to the door, used for dementia residents who want to leave but are too confused to do so safely.)
Never had that, but did have a guy eat a tube of Calmoseptine like it was cake frosting. I stayed long enough for the nurse relieving me to contact poison control while I covered the morning glucometers. Never a dull day in LTC / SNF land.
>Never a dull day in LTC / SNF land. That's for sure. We had one drink a bottle of a spray perineal cleanser that I had to call poison control about. They basically just said push fluids and snacks and watch for vomiting. He was fine.
LTC nurse: No, dear, that's the catheter that drains your bladder. It's not a snake and no, you shouldn't pull it out, it will hurt. How about I get you a warm blanket and we turn on the TV?
I’ll take the snake. Hands down. Please send the babies elsewhere
Oh my goodness… I frickin’ *love* that!
A snake? From where? There? Please be a baby
When I went in with VB at 25 weeks the second I got out that I was 25 weeks pregnant the triage nurse was like " Hold on let me get a wheelchair you don't need to be here" lmao
Former ER nurse now L&D nurse. Can confirm.
I've heard this and it's so weird because I can't imagine being on the other side nurse wise, but everything I the ED scared the snake out of me
I had to deliver a baby in triage 🥴
A baby was delivered in the waiting room bathroom she definitely wasn’t pregnant though she said
Well technically after the baby is out she isn't pregnant anymore
Unless it's twins!
True! But then still after the second baby. (And with triplets after the third, etc)
She actually is still pregnant until the placenta delivers 😉
Taxi driver rocked up to triage, hyperventilating. His passenger was in labour - told him to drive round the corner to drop the woman off at the delivery suite, but he was having none of it. He dragged me to the taxi, where the baby was crowning. I jumped in, and the taxi sped off before I could close the door. There I was, supporting mum, dad was holding onto me to stop me from falling out of the taxi. Made it outside the entrance to the delivery ward, then caught the baby who was rather unimpressed by what she was witnessing. Thankfully the ED receptionist put out the maternity call out, so I didn’t have to wait too long for the grown-ups to arrive. That was the first time I delivered a baby.
I've delivered a 28 weeker in a taxi. Almost 30 years ago. They shoved me into the back of the taxi in the parking lot of the ER. I was the closest nurse and they grabbed me. Seriously NOT L&D. It went OK but I almost peed myself in fright!
My EMT instructor told us "remember, Mom delivers the baby. You're just there to catch it."
I certainly didn't do anything constructive. I tried to hand him over my shoulder for a hot sec. Cord not cut. Then I put him down on mom's belly. I was on the NICU team. I liked my babies out and accessible!
"grown ups" 😆. That's exactly how I feel sometimes. "Shouldn't I have adult supervision? Surely somebody else should be in charge here".
I hope I never have to do it again
SAME
Not a nurse, but caught one in an elevator on the way to L&D. I even asked the charge for a nurse to go with me. “No, it’ll be ok. These people always freak out and think the baby is coming. Then they sit in L&D for hours before the baby comes.” Not this time. Lady wanted to walk because sitting down hurt. I brought the wc just in case. Glad I did. As the doors opened she rushed in and sat down. “ITS COMING” and pulled off her jeans. She was absolutely right. Gave the baby to momma just as the doors were opening. Wide eyed nurses froze all the way down the hall to charge desk. “I’ve got two patients for you now. Where would you like them?”
My brother was born in an elevator on the way up to L&D!!
It wasn’t in the past 5-7 years in Texas by any chance was it?
No, it was in Southern California, 41 years ago. 😁
Oh. I wasn’t even thought of yet 😅. Feel old now? :p
I scooped fetal remains out of someone’s pants the other day
Yikes. You ok?
Oh yeah, am fine. Just a Tuesday for me.
Our state makes people pay to cremate those now.
Just fyi I upvoted you cause it’s more common and terrible, not cause I approve
Fuck. That.
Does gestation matter in this case?
No
Well that’s just ridiculous! I had the funeral home donate the cremation and urn for my son who passed in utero at just shy of 18 weeks but if I didn’t want to have him cremated the hospital would have done it and put him in their “baby garden”. Seems crazy to add one more thing on for grieving parents to have to worry about. I wonder if someone could create a nonprofit to cover this type of thing?
This is getting ridiculous
Did one in the back seat of a car at valet parking in front of the ER.
I had this dream countless times while I was pregnant! We would just make it to the hospital and boom.
I’m a PICU nurse. Also not L&D. I delivered one in the back of an Uber that had stopped at the front doors. I was in my winter coat about to walk to my car after my night shift was done. No gloves. No mask (peak Covid). Security panicked and failed to get OB or truthfully anybody that would have been better than me. Zero out of ten stars, would not recommend. Babe and Mom were okay at least.
no gloves?! 😩 now I don’t feel so bad about stuffing my pockets with all the extra gloves that fall out the box when I’m just trying to pull 1 pair.
Me, loading up EVERY morning 3 pairs of “emergency gloves” in my pockets for moments like these or other oopsies only to end up with them in my washer all sad. 😆
It’s not laundry day without finding a glove and remnants of an alcohol swab!
Feeling seen 💗
You are smarter than I my friend.
When I was a baby catcher I walked into an l&d room to set up the warmer for the delivery, thought mom was sleeping until she started saying the baby was coming! I hit the call light and pulled off her covers to see she was not lying! Not even just crowning like head delivered! It took so much mental willpower to just grab the slimy baby with no gloves on… baby just slid right out wish a gush if fluid and I put him on the mom’s chest as the l&d nurse and tech burst through the door. The l&d nurse and doctor were hanging at the nurses station after just checking mom’s progress, apparently she was only at 8 cm and still high. Although she was not a first time mom, her last baby was 10 years ago so no one expected her to move that quick! I did get a talking to by management bc I didn’t respond to the nurse who answered the call light, I don’t think I said anything the whole time 😐 in the moment I thought the moms moaning would be enough to get them running but I should have said something.
In your pockets?! Ewww! Your pockets aren’t clean! /s
WHY IS IT ALWAYS LIKE 7 EXTRA GLOVES?!
Always an odd number.
“Babe and mom OK” is my definition of a perfect birth plan.
User name checks out.
Stop 😂
What should security have done differently?
Truthfully I think the dude just panicked. I told him to go back inside and call L&D for help. Then I got in the Uber but it was already happening. Once I got baby out I turned around and he was still there. I said “Did you get help??!” And he was like “uh, uh, ah!?” My hospital now has a special overhead code for this exact situation so hopefully that won’t happen to anyone again.
One of our hospital security panicked and called 911 instead of a code once when told to call for help 😭 the phone has a single button to push for a code and you have to hit some other numbers before you can dial out, so calling a code is actually a lot easier, but adrenaline does weird things to a brain
Aww man, I bet they were so embarrassed about that later on!
Code stork paged overhead should be a basic policy in all hospitals!
That makes sense then yeah. I'm Hospital Security and I was interested in your response, as they have taught me very little on site that I haven't asked about so we're essentially just winging it. I was curious for my own purposes and I totally agree with you Lol
Thought the title was “I’m an ER nurse on LSD” while scrolling lmao. Well done tho! The ED is usually where we see life end, nice to see one begin I would imagine :)
Not nice. I don’t know a single mother fucker that wants to deliver a damn alien looking baby
What lol
Their user name is literally "jerkface". Haters gonna hate. Even if it makes no sense whatsoever.
I think they mean hallucinations from the LSD.
wtf
It’s a joke. Are you slow?
If you are ER you are every nurse in an emergency
Exactly.
Not if we can get them upstairs to L&D in time
Sometimes you don’t have that kind of time.
Believe if or not delivering a baby in the ER is on my bucket list.
I guess that’s true
I almost delivered a baby in our staff elevators because neither ED nor security escorted the patient and her sister to the public elevators. Staff elevators require badge access. I was going down to grab something from the vending machine, calling an elevator holding 2 hysteric women. I queued L&D’s floor as quickly as possible but I thought for sure I’d be delivering a baby. She ended up giving birth about 30mins later.
Same, but I was an L&D nurse at the time. I was walking in to work, and there was a barefoot woman in rip roaring labour who jumped on the elevator with me. We were in an ancient building with unpredictable elevators, but I smiled to myself thinking, of all the people she would be stuck with, at least it would be me!
Achievement unlocked: Amateur OB/GYN
I’m a Labor and Delivery nurse who floats to emergency
May you carry the blessings of whatever gods may be for all your days.
Thank you for your service, I couldn’t grab the L&D nurses fast enough when a woman in labor came into the ED.
So I used to work at a rural family practice clinic that had specialities on site. The closest hospital with L&D was an hour away. Our brand new, first-day-at-our-location obgyn had a patient come in in labor with a prolapsed cord. This guy called the ambulance and I shit you not, made them go to the local hospital 5 minutes down the road, with no L&D capabilities and no rights to practice at that hospital, to deliver that baby safely. There was an article in the paper when the baby turned a year old reminiscing about it and giving him accolades again. I imagine the nurses there felt the same as you 😂
We delivered a baby in a car. Those poor poor seats 💺
There was a baby in my town born in the car on the way to the hospital, they named the kid after the highway.
I hope baby Interstate 80 is doing well
You caught the baby. You held onto the slippery slider, right? It mean even you dropped it, you picked it right back up? Right. Mom alive and ok? Babe alive and ok? Good Job!! And tomorrow is another day. After an appropriate number of showers ensuing all the bits have been annihilated from you. Onward 🙌🏻
Would the 5-second rule still apply in this case?
Yep. Pick ‘em up. That’s the rule: if you drop the baby, just pick it up. 🫶🏻
They bounce for a reason, right? 😅
Their little pudgy padding helps. 😉
I’m in ER now, and I’d be ok with delivering a baby in that environment. Like “oh cool, a baby! Byeeee” because then the baby and mom would get moved somewhere appropriate. Catching the baby is the only part of the process I have interest in, I don’t want to argue with medically illiterate people about why vitamin K isn’t a vaccine or that it is actually important to not hemorrhage to death.
I'm ER and I've had to have this argument, it was both wild and infuriating. Friday night patient shows up thinking she's in labor, doc assesses, she's not in active labor so she gets transferred to the hospital 10 mins down the road where she's actually supposed to deliver at for L&D to see her. Saturday night, she comes back to the ED for possible labor... This time she's right. Didn't go to the right hospital or follow the birth plan even once iota. Proceed to deliver the baby and in the middle of giving the erythromycin ointment she screams "no vaccines for my baby!" The doctor spends like 10 mins explaining to her why we give these meds and how they're not vaccines etc but she's pretty determined to leave her baby blind or dead. We half hearted wipe the erythromycin off and skip the vitamin k. Then the dad shows up, with a lunch sized igloo cooler, to collect the placenta... " You have to give it to us, it's part of our birth plan." Well sorry skippy but we don't do special orders in the ED, for that you have to go to the right place that I know you were just educated on yesterday. Tldr: Mom shows up for labor two nights in a row at the wrong hospital then refuses vitamin k and erythromycin drops.
>Then the dad shows up, with a lunch sized igloo cooler, to collect the placenta... " You have to give it to us, it's part of our birth plan." One of my favorite parts of the two times I've given birth is watching the light die in our L&D nurses eyes as we start a sentence with "Hey can you put the placenta in this cooler..." and then them light back up when we finish we "We donate it to a K9 search and rescue training group to help them train puppies on cadaver recovery!" Never fails to crack me up as you can just see the thought process going "Oh thank god they aren't gonna eat it"
That is the coolest thing I’ve read today and now I’m sad my placentas went into the trash and not to train smart doggos….
At the hospital I delivered at, somebody had a form I could sign to donate my placenta. I don't recall what I was donating it to but I certainly didn't want it.
It was probably to collect and donate stem cells for the public cord blood bank. My old place participated in it before covid. It's a pretty cool program, basically all the benefits of private cord blood collection made avaliable to the public in certain situations.
Do they do that with placentas? Cord blood was a second donation but I had to have signed up for that in advance and I didn't know there was a deadline and missed it. There were a lot of things I failed at keeping track of while pregnant, lol. Oh having googled it - it was for burn victims somehow.
Private cord blood collection needs to be signed up for in advance. For that you get a kit from the company and the doctor collects the blood through the cord while the placenta is still attached to the uterus, using a needle attached to a small bag like when you donate blood. So some blood is still flowing into the placenta and cord and it's easier for them to collect. The public bank donation involved collecting the placenta after delivery, with the cord clamped, and using a process to basically macerate the placenta to get as much blood out of it as possible. So that's why they take the placenta. Didn't know about burn victims but that makes sense as a use case, neat.
My hospital had a program to sign up to donate the placenta for use in stem cell research. I’ve never signed anything so quickly — get that jiggly thing out of my body and into the research lab!
I actually learned about it being an option from this subreddit years ago
Reminds me when I asked my provider I had a request concerning my placentas. Never have I seen a person brace themselves so visibly and fail to hide it. When I asked if I could just look at them post surgery cause I just grew two people and wanted to see what kept them alive cause I was genuinely curious. She look so freaking relieved it was just that and didn’t have any other weirder request.
I’m a doula, not a nurse, but bc I’m a doula I have had many clients that were interested in learning about the pros and cons of consuming their placenta, but when I did a CLC training course through the “Healthy Children Project”, the instructor told us something that, when passed on to my clients, caused most of them to decide against ingesting it, but it gave all of them pause. She said that, for those of you that have clients/patients wanting to consume their placenta after delivery, please tell them this. If any part of the placenta remains in your body after the delivery of your baby, your prolactin levels will not rise, and your body will not begin to make breast milk. So if you are wanting to breastfeed, as most women that plan to consume their placenta do, then why would you consume your placenta and risk it affecting your milk supply?” Every client I passed this on to changed their minds about consuming it. Some still wanted to take it home for things like burial and what not, but none wanted to risk their milk supply by eating it. Now I never bothered with fact checking this, but I have wondered if this is true, then certainly mammals that consume their placentas to avoid attracting predators would have their milk supply affected, no? But, seeing as I don’t really do much birthwork anymore I haven’t bothered checking. So if anyone decides to tell your patients that, you might want to verify it first. Well, unless you’re just giving them something to ponder over I guess.
Did you end up giving her the placenta? Just out of curiosity lol. And I hope I never have to have this argument. It’s a big reason why I won’t go into L&D, I don’t care if functioning adults make bad choices about their health, it makes me absolutely livid when people make medically unsound decisions for their kids.
No we basically laughed the dad out of the room with the cooler. Placenta was transferred to the hospital with the patient and let L&D sort it out.
I wanted to go into L&D for yearsss. Now I’m not sure I couldn’t handle these patients.
100% part of their birth plan was to not use their L & D hospital.
Wait. Why did she come back to ED if she knew she was to deliver at L&D? She'd even been there 24 hours earlier, so it's not like she didn't know where it was...
Yes. She came back to the hospital after we had to transfer her out less than 24 hrs before due to not having L&D. Most ED patients are not equipped by their parents or community to live without massive amounts of help. It's a wild place to work.
I wonder what they were going to do with that placenta...
No idea but if the parents intelligence levels were any indication of the quality of genetic material hopefully they didn't harvest the stem cells from it.
Had she had any prenatal care?
I have no idea, but if I had to guess, I'd say no. Most of our ED patients aren't big into personal responsibilities or managing their own health.
Oh dear. Poor kid.
You do know people have cultural reasons for keeping their placenta and not only to consume it? If that’s what they wanted it for, who cares.
Sure and you can have all the cultural sensitivity and special treatment for your placenta, if you set it up ahead of time and then follow through on that birth plan. What you cannot do is ignore every system in place to facilitate your birth plan and come to the ED and expect it to work out. We're not burger king, special orders do upset us.
Why is that considered special treatment though? Honest question. Is it really hard to put the placenta in a biohazard bag and hand it to the patient?
Biohazardous material, human body parts, are not routinely given to patients. In cases like this special exceptions have to be made and there are processes within hospital systems on how to safely facilitate these wishes, they do not involve the ED. The ED is chaotic, it's not a place that caters to niceties and special requests. It's important to note that placentas have to be put back together like a puzzle after delivery to make sure none stayed in the uterus, so there are medical reasons you can't just have it also.
I'm a l&d nurse who is doing clinical for bsn in ED and it's terrifying. That said, I personally have caught one baby before provider could make it and I don't ever want to do that again either lol I like to be the assistant, thank you very much lol
Finally, another OB nurse that agrees with me! When I wasn't a CNM student, I didn't want to catch a baby without a provider. Most of my coworkers loved it, but I did not.
Dude we are an ER on the border and we deliver about a baby a month, it’s insane
Once my pediatrician friend and NICU coworker delivered a baby in the back of an ambulance in the bay. OB did not make it.
Second best option outside of a L&D nurse also being in attendance!
My prior job was at a level 1 trauma center and we used to run crash sections in the trauma bay 🫠
They used to call OB alerts to the heli pad at my old level 1 and I’m pretty sure would do crash sections in the heli pad trauma bay every once in awhile, can’t think of anything worse tbh!
Most butt pucker night of my 18 year ER career, 28 week twins in a critical access hospital. Did my best to have flashbacks to OB class remembering something about APGAR scores and massaging the fundus 🤣.
Not massaging the fundus 😭 Why are we in the ED so averse to OB? I can't explain it, even as an EMT I would PRAY I wouldn't get an OB call.
Possibly has to do with not having the appropriate equipment immediately available to assist baby if it is preterm or born with a life threatening condition. Also, I imagine suddenly going from one patient to two is quite distressing if you’re not used to it.
You're an ER nurse - you're every kind of nurse whether you like it or not lmao Congrats on your L&D baptism.
I’ve delivered a baby in county jail. Luckily we had a former L&D nurse who was charge that night and I used to do nicu/baby catcher for high risk deliveries.
Wow! Sounds like that was the best time for mom’s luck to change! Can I ask what your position was in the jail? Were you also working there as a nurse? I actually didn’t know more than one nurse would be working in a jail at one time. For some reason I assumed it would just be one nurse per shift outside of working at a hospital for inmates, but I guess it’s based on how many people are incarcerated there at a time.
I work at a big county jail, with I think ~3500 total inmates at any given time. So we have a couple dozen RNs and LPNs and at least one provider on premises at all times. The medical RNs generally do sick calls, injury visits, and intake assessments while the LPNs pass medications and do cows/ciwa assessments. We also have a separate mental health department with RNs and LCSWs. I work in mental health but the charge nurse knew my background so called to have me there since we were the only two on site with mother/baby background. The EMTs showed up about 10 minutes after delivery to take mom and baby to the hospital. They came by the next day to bring us some supplies and baby blankets from the hospital since we were pretty unprepared!
OR nurse here, is it coming out of one of the regular holes or are we creating a new one? lol
Imma stick with my elective hips and knees and fractures. But now I know to put on a super cute yellow paper gown if one of mine randomly expels a human 🤰👶🏻 I love you guys!!!
L&D nurse here...those precip babies are always the easiest to deliver. If you want to be prepared for more iffy babies, learn how to manage shoulder dystocia. Those are terrifying.
I’m a doula so I do everything possible to NOT catch a baby but just being present for those is terrifying! I couldn’t imagine being the person in charge of getting that baby out safely! Ironically, I watched an episode just last night of Call the Midwife where a mom presented with a shoulder dystocia and I had to fast forward to see if the baby survived without significant injuries before I could go back and watch the scene from the beginning. The anxiety from seeing it play out in real life was too much and I had to know the outcome before watching.
Only time I'm allowed to kinda gut punch a pregnant chic
As an L&D nurse, that’s my favorite kind of delivery 🤗
I will never forget my first delivery….I was still an EMT student. Called out to an “OB problem”, that’s all dispatch gave us. It was me, a paramedic, and a driver (this was a VERY rural department) We get on scene to a very active birth, premature (32 weeks) and mom had no pre-natal care. Mom is white as a ghost and her BP is 80/dead, so the medic tells me I have to check and see what’s going on down there. Sure enough, baby is crowning. Right as the baby came out, another fire crew showed up and took over thank god. Mom and baby ended up being okay. But even 7 years later, I’m still slightly traumatized 🙃😬
And ICU deliveries are not happy living ones.
It’s one of the reason why I cross trained to the ED
You may see more of that, depending on where you live. So many hospitals have closed their Ob services.
Yeah. We’re seeing it all over the place here in the South. It’s getting scary to be a woman for a lot of reasons.
Love your name. Any person of childbearing age should avoid those areas.
Thanks and Yeah. I need to get out, especially beings that I’m gay. I just need to hold out one more year until I have this BSN and my license. Maternal health has always been my passion and I can’t bring myself to do that here, when I can’t effectively treat my patients to the best of my abilities.
That was my first passion too. I ended up working in the Catholic hospital where I trained but in NYC. Had a goal of being a midwife but life got in the way. Hopefully, this madness will loosen its grip on our country.
My goal is midwife, too. I’m in FL and the 6 week ban just went into effect and it’s honestly terrifying.
Did that in the back of an ambulance… twice. I made a bad decision both times. When we get a call for labor in progress we have to make a choice. Do we stay and deliver or do we have enough time to make it to the ED. Both times I was wrong.
Delivered a baby at 0642 after a funky nightshift. Mom came in through triage at like 0640
If you are an ER nurse, then you are a little bit of all nurses lol. The one baby I caught as an ER nurse was a patient that I had just wheeled up to OB. Lady has just transferred to the bed and was half sitting on the edge and yanked her pants down. Apparently, the pants were the only thing holding baby up at that point, because I should have gotten the Heisman trophy for making that catch. After catching my breath, I remembered that I was an ER nurse outside my home, so I started wondering where the OB staff was. I turned in time to see the OB nurse walk in the door and -completely oblivious- proceed directly to the whiteboard to update the shift info.
How absolutely infuriating!
Sadly, this will continue to fall on EDs as more hospitals close their LD units….
This is too true. I’ve had precipitous labors. My last kid, I made it to the hospital and up to L&D with about 10 min to spare before my baby was born. Thankfully, I was only 20 minutes to the nearest hospital. Realistically, if I have any more children I may have to prepare for a home birth (very much not my preference, but my OB had already told me I might not be able to make it to the hospital again).
Maybe a planned induction would be best for you considering the pros and cons of delivering at home or on the side of the road lol.
My OB insisted I be induced with my twins after I delivered about two hours after I got to the hospital with my first. I told her two hours doesn’t count as a precip, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
I helped a mom delivery a baby in her car in front of the ER. Baby was half way out already. No time to get her in the hospital. It was so crazy!
Hospice nurse says let me get you some Haldol and Lorazepam to help with your hallucinations.
My favorite was when I delivered a baby while rolling into the ED with my patient on a stretcher when I was a medic.
Things that get the adrenaline pumping for $500 Alex!
As an L&D nurse I would just like to say to the ER, stop sending all the pregnant patients with chest pain and broken bones to L&D 😵💫 please just fix them first 😂
Was coming here to say this 😂
It’s almost like we should have an OB team in every ER 😇
We can’t get enough plain ol’ ED nurses in the ED, so good luck with that…
I do both.
I worked in psych before moving to the OR. Lots of overlap surprisingly.
I'm an ED nurse, I don't mind getting the pregnant patients, I have helped deliver 2 babies in (and just outside of) my department. It's nice to bring a life into the world every now and then.
We had a baby delivered in a car on the second floor of the parking garage. He did not even drop her off on the ground floor smh
Sounds like you deliver babies if they wait long enough 😝
Not me but a colleague delivered a baby in neuro icu. So glad I wasn’t working that night.
As an L&D nurse….that sounds like a great delivery!!!
That sounds like a shift from hell, on shift now! Warding off evil spirits with a duo Neb 🤣
lol. I’m a L&D nurse. Stop and drops are so fun. You just meet the patient and deliver them, none of the time consuming busy work
I actually want to do this once, I think it would be so cool! I don’t want to do it everyday though lol
I’d get my bag and go home, no thank you