Day in the Life: Newborn Nursery

Happy Monday + welcome to another Medical Mondays and my fifth “Day in the Life” for residency–Newborn Nursery, aka my last rotation for the calendar year! I’ve been in residency for half a year already–where has the time gone!? It feels like Match Day really wasn’t all that long ago!

A moment of full disclosure: I’ve never been much of a baby person. I’m the kind of person who’ll get super excited and greet the dog first before I’ll say hello to the human holding onto the other end of the leash. Babies, not so much.

I adore my niece and I promise I don’t hate kids; the not-spoiled + well-behaved ones are awesome to be around, and I get along well with most of them partly because I probably act like a really big kid, but on the whole…please refer to #1 of my “Reflections on Pediatrics.” :P

That being said, I really enjoyed this rotation! I think the purpose of it was to make sure we got tons and tons of practice with newborn exams, and…well, that definitely happened.

Day in the Life: Newborn Nursery

6am – 8am

Yes, 6am is early, especially when you’re not a morning person, but I originally thought this rotation started at 5:15 which would effectively mean I’d have to start walking to work at 4:50am or so…given that, I was completely okay with a 6 am start time. ;] (It’s amazing what a little perspective can do, right!?)

I’d meet up with the peds intern in the morning and we’d split up the babies for the day, round them all up from their moms’ rooms and do all the newborn exams, follow up on bilirubin levels, hearing and CCHD (critical congenital heart disease) screenings and work on discharges and progress notes. Then we’d talk to the mom about anticipatory guidance + follow-up care, tips on breastfeeding, bottlefeeding, how to have the baby sleep, etc.

Turkey remnants from Thanksgiving!?

8am – 9am

There were peds lectures every morning from 8-9am and depending on how much work we had left to finish up, we would sometimes get to go to em’!

9am – 12pm

We’d follow up on labs/tests and write up other notes while our attending did his/her exams. Then we’d present our patients, discuss our plan of care, and go round with our attending on all the babies’ families.

This is how we roll during our conference lectures on Fridays. (Kidding. We were doing board prep questions and my friend wanted me to demonstrate what suboccipital inhibition/OMT was.)

12pm – 1pm

Yay for an actual designated-ish lunchtime! Peds and FM have been interviewing med students on Wednesdays and Fridays so I’ve been getting free double-lunches, which means that one ends up being free dinner. ;P

I also got to go to a resident wellness meeting and found out about an awesome program in NJ that helps people to learn to turn their lives around with the food choices they make! There’ll be a whole separate entry on this later. :D!

Just for kicks, here’s the delicious food they made for the meeting!

I’m currently in the process of making my own kraut!! :D Will keep you guys posted on whether or not I succeed with that–I’ve really just been squishing it in its jar every day.

1pm – 4:30/5-6pm

In the afternoons, we waited for deliveries/c-sections and we’d take turns going with our senior resident to attend the deliveries. Some afternoons would be pretty quiet whereas others would be super busy. I actually bumped into my former housemate (we lived together 5 years ago when I was here for grad school!) on the floor last week because she recently had her daughter! :O!

I had office hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so I’d run off to see my patients. I’m actually starting to build my own patient panel and have regulars who specifically request to see me! :]!! My patients have been saying super nice things about me and it makes my day! :D

You’ve got great bedside manner…and I really like your socks.”

“I didn’t feel comfortable bringing this up with you last time since I’ve never had a female doctor before, but you make me feel like I can talk to you about anything. I’m glad I finally decided to stop being so stubborn and to just come in!”

“Thank you for listening to me.”

“Thank you for recommending that for us; I really think it’s going to help a lot!”

:D!!!

I also got to precept with my program director for the first time ever and she said my presentations are awesome(?!) + that I’m way ahead of the curve because even though I talk very quickly, they’re fast, coherent and practical so she enjoys em’ since she doesn’t have to sit there forever waiting for me to get to the point. (Hooray!)

Cute Christmas decorations in the cafeteria!

• Baby humans or baby animals? I’m getting better at wrapping em’ into little baby burritos to keep em’ warm?!
• Have you ever been complimented on something that you thought you sucked at needed to work/improve on?