Our beloved night nurse Mistura is away on holiday (although, since she went to Disney World with her husband and 4 children, while she has to deal with only 1 child at work I am not sure it's really a vacation) and this has filled us with dread because of our previous disastrous nursing calamities.
We were promised by the agency that this woman was an RN (as opposed to LPN) and knew how to use the feeding pump that Lula has. When she arrived she seemed nice enough. I spent an hour and a half explaining everything to her. She seemed comfortable handling Lula. We told her to knock on the door if anything seemed amiss.
We got the first knock at 1:30am. Lula spat up and was wheezing. I gave her a nebulizer treatment and held her until she calmed down. All seemed to be back under control, but the nurse really seemed like she had no idea what to do. I tried to go back to sleep but no dice. Next knock came about 2 hours later. Lula had a fever and had been fussing the whole time. She had vomited everywhere. I went out to assess the damage and it looked like an OR. There were bed clothes and burp cloths strewn around. None of the feeding stuff had been cleaned. There were dirty rubber gloves and soaking paper towels. I started cleaning and as I cleaned I stomped until Sam came out too. I was fuming. The nurse sat there and kept saying that she couldn't put her down because she was fussing. I was mad at Lula who always does this with a new nurse and I was mad at the nurse for being so ill equipped to handle what are routine pediatric issues that any hospital nurse wouldn't think twice about taking care of.
The last straw was at 6:30 am when we heard incessant beeping. Sam went out to assess. The feed was an hour and a half late. She had accidentally cleared the machine and had no idea how to reset it. I lay in bed unable to sleep wanting to throttle this woman for being so inept. I know it's so much information to take in but she's a nurse. I went to art school! I'm a mom not a nursing instructor.
Tonight I wrote out an entire manifesto of Lula's precautions, instructions, suggestions and orders. I figure if the nurse tonight can at least read hopefully we will get a little more sleep.
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