“This is really happening!” is what I thought to myself in an epiphany as I sat through 4 hours of “Powerchart” training on Tuesday (charting software in the hospital). It was just one of those moments when the reality of all the skills and labs that have begun to be furniture in my confined live quarters of the last two months, begin to take shape in a much larger context. I don’t know what it was about that moment, learning to enter data that one day soon I will be collecting and entering into Powerchart, that brought about the clarity. It may have been the actually being in the hospital, actually having a clue about what the various not long ago foreign words and acronyms meant. But there is was the reality that I actually am going to be a nurse.

Then it happened today again at “Research Day” . . . which in many ways I scorn, because I am a feeler, not a knower . . . I think most of life is on a need to know basis (a google expert!). I am most interested in learning things that pertain to what is meaningful and important to me in the here and now. So I was kind of dreading listening to a whole bunch of academic theories being spread around, but today I did get a glimpse into why the theory of nursing might be a little bit different and more appealing to me . . .because evidence based practice is just that . . . the theories actually have a shot at becoming practice. So despite myself, I must admit sitting in that room full of nursing students and faculty I felt a little bit of pride for my new profession. Internally there was an acknowledgement that although I do not believe I fit fully yet and I feel very infantile, that one day I will share the deep heritage and history and unwritten rules of these people and that really they do not appear to be too bad.

Another positive note this week was the physical assessment test, I aced it and I felt so proud and was really affirmed by the testing instructor. I don’t know if it’s merely the fact that this experience starves us of affirmation, but it felt so good to be celebrated for a job well done. I was told that I was going to be a good nurse (something admittedly I believe about myself, but it’s hard to keep believing as I am surviving GEP). It was encouraging to hear: “if you kept on doing just what you had done and that through doing it you would learn many things that would make you an even better nurse”.

Overall, this week has been a mile marker for me. It closes off eight intense weeks of steep learning curves and feeling completely inadequate, never-mind physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. I am walking away with a slightly clearer identity as a nurse and a little bit of a thrill to walk into the hospital next week and meet my next terrifying experience head on with the hopes that I will indeed make a great nurse and a great future midwife.

Getting down and dirty . . .

Well the 15month decline into nursing, nursing, and more nursing has begun as 43 of us showed up for duty on Monday at the UIC College of Nursing. This is an accelerated program of very distinguished scholars from all over . . . all eager to start their first day of meeting the manikins, bedpans, foley catheters and bathing techniques of everyday hospital hygiene. It was a grueling week, starting of with many technical glitches on Blackboard (for those of my friends unversed in modern education, Blackboard is the technological, communication hub of every class now . . . yet another cost to you to print out handouts that they post of the web -- I think I may have already worked through 3/4 of a ream of paper) and ending with two days of 7hours of lectures. Our class gathers after hours on a Google groups where the fine points of the days are worked out together, like did anyone understand what that syllabus said, or does anyone yet understand what we are supposed to be doing for this 8credit hour class? And some of the more mundane questions . . . which are the best all white shoes to buy for clinicals . . . and an all time favorite what bar should we hit after Friday class. But mostly this week it was about survival and the hope that if we get this far in we can go the distance. It was a week of much doubt and confusion, but also spotted with moments of how friends and family will develop out of this thrown together community of sorts and how we may one day not have to fake that we know what they talking about . . . we actually will feel more a part of the powerful heritage of nursing.

Birthing of a Midwife

Today in the midst of the first week of class we were asked to share when the moment we decided to become a nurse was. For many this was a journey of sorts, for me I can remember everything about that moment. It was a middle of the night conversation with my hubby about where life was headed and what I wanted to do in life. Our son was turn 3 and our daughter 1, and I was beginning to be ready take on the real world again. Then he asked the typical “what if there were no barriers” question (I’ve been life coaching for five years you would think I would have thought of that one on my own). And the first thing that popped in my head was I would be a midwife. It was there in our first salt-box home in Rhode Island that I embarked on this journey into midwifery.

Of course, I took it relatively slow researching and deciding to take the Nurse Midwifery track instead of the Direct Entry point, mostly from the standpoint of wanting to provide more opportunities to educate others on the ideas of healthy, natural birthing to be exposed to some of those principle and to be able to educate from partially within the system rather than from across the street. So I began by taking a introduction to nursing class at a local community college in RI. From there I applied to two graduate entry programs, and due to prerequisites had to wait a year. During that time I figured out that I was not as bad a science student as I had once lead myself to believe and I became more confident in my abilities to handle it academically.

I then applied and was accepted to UIC a second time and was very excited. Throughout this time I became trained as a DONA certified doula and had several birthing experiences, and it continued to affirm my decision.

I know that in many ways the next fifteen months of become an RN is merely the on-ramp to my areas of passion. But am totally on board for being right where I am and learning and growing through this process. And I am looking forward to the actual Midwifery aspect of it going forward, but I am also excited to learn all sorts of tricks of the trade and prepare myself for the future.

I am also doing this with the load of a young family and that has posed many a stressor. But each new open door has also provided just the right people, care and loving for my kids and I will have to trust that to be provided throughout this journey, because they really are the most important investment of my life.

I want this to be a clarifying time and I want to see more of myself unlocked and revealed. I believe that there are so many skills, talents and gifts that are going to only be sharpen and honed by my new learning and I am waiting to see the merging of who I have been and who I am becoming. It will be challenging and exhausting, but I will forage ahead.