Carry On Nursing?

I must warn you. I am about to have a rant. A pregnant rant. It will not be pretty.

I've been back at university for over 2 weeks now after having 3 weeks on sick leave and 2 weeks of Christmas holidays. I have to say that I do like being busy every day. Having a reason to leave the house each morning (or each lunchtime, depending what shift I am doing) is great. I tend to get a bit stir crazy being cooped up all day with nothing better to do than the washing and ironing. However, there is one aspect of all the busying around that is just not agreeing with me - and that is the fact that I am absolutely exhausted.

I am not new to shift work. I've been a student nurse for well over a year now and most of my placements have involved getting up at some ungodly hour while it's still pitch black outside. Up to now, it has never bothered me in the slightest. In fact, I always quite liked the early starts. Of course, up to now I've not been 25 weeks pregnant.

The past two weeks I have been on placement on a rather busy surgical ward. Shifts start at 7:15am so I set the alarm for 6am. By 8am I'm helping the patients get washed and changed, making beds and running round trying to find an obs machine that actually works so I can take everyone's blood pressure to make sure that nobody is about to expire. Depending on which staff are on, my break time is anything from as early as 9:30 to as late as 1pm. This means I'm not getting regular meals so my blood sugar must be up and down like a yo-yo. At 12pm it's time to give the patient's their lunch and to finish off any jobs that weren't done throught the morning (which is usually the obs because the machines keep conking out). By about 1pm there's a bit of a lull as all the heavy work has been done and the nurses get on with writing up notes and handing over to the late shift. I manage to snatch a bit of a sit down while this is going on, as by this point I'm really feeling the strain of having been on my feet for so long. I'm hot and bothered, absolutely shattered, aching all over, my right leg usually feels like it's going to drop off at the hip and my feet are so swollen they're practically bursting out of my shoes. I am absolutely gagging for lie down in a darkened room with a sign on the door that reads "Do Not Disturb on Pain of Death". Or words to that effect. Unfortunately, my much-needed rest is often cut short as it usually falls to the students to answer the patients' buzzers (and some of those patients are extremely buzzer-happy) as the staff often suffer a bout of extreme deafness in the early afternoon. Funny that.

After running around like a headless chicken for the best part of 8 hours I think I can be forgiven for being a little tired. After getting home and just about having the energy to remove my uniform and shove it in the washing machine to massacre any hospital superbugs I've picked up, I'll be damned if I am going to do anything else for the rest of the day. And usually, I don't. I lie down with my feet up to try to rid my legs of the oedema (that's fluid for you non-nursey types) that has built up over the course of the shift. Until I started this placement I did not think it was possible for a woman of my build to have the legs of an African Elephant, but this appears to be what has happened. "Cankles" are not an urban myth.

Last year, after finishing placement, I would often come home, cook a lovely evening meal and have it ready for Graeme getting home from work. I absolutely loved making something from scratch. Not any more. Cookery in all it's forms is no longer part of my life. I simply cannot be bothered. Even when I can be bothered my body is so stiff I can't even bend down to put anything in the oven. Why waste precious energy making meals when ASDA or the Takeaway At The End Of The Street can do that for me? Why slave over a hot stove when I can be, well, sitting?

You'd think with such a level of exhaustion I would be sleeping like a log. Not so. Pregnant women do not sleep. We are nocturnal. We have to be nocturnal as all we want to do all night is pee. When not peeing we try in vain to arrange our pillows to support our body in such a way that will allow comfort. This is impossible. We cannot lie on our fronts as our bellies are too big. We cannot lie on our sides as our bumps fall to one side and need propping up with yet more pillows. In fact we use so many pillows we fear that we may be swamped by them and suffocate in the night. Finally, we cannot lie on our backs as our limbs go numb. Not to mention the fact that we're crippled with heartburn no matter what position we lie in. Great. In an attempt to overcome these problems, for the first time in my life I have taken to sleeping sitting up. Well, obviously I don't sleep because I'm nocturnal now, but if I were to sleep that would be how I'd have to do it ;o)

Don't get me wrong. I knew pregnancy would be diffcult and that being a student nurse whilst pregnant would be extremely draining. However, I didn't think it would get so exhausting so quickly. I feel like I'm close to burnout after only 2 weeks back at placement. I have no idea when I'm supposed to do my coursework when all I have the time for is going to placement and recovering from placement! Friends, and even staff at the hospital, have started commenting on how tired I look. One patient even said she felt guilty for being in bed and having me to look after her - the woman had just had major surgery and thought that I was the one that needed looking after! Luckily I see my midwife and my GP this week so I'll pick their brains for advice. I was hoping to get to the end of the semester before taking my maternity leave, but if I'm struggling now I'm only going to feel worse as the weeks go on and my belly gets even bigger. Right now, doing an 8-hour shift at 30+ weeks pregnant makes labour seem almost appealing...

Lisa xxx