Nursing

[Lauren and Hunter]

I have always been really indecisive about what I want to do for a living, and lately I've been looking into nursing. Specifically, types of L&D (labor and delivery) nursing-- particularly neonatal. I recently had my first baby and was thinking I might enjoy working with newborn babies. I could probably also enjoy working with the mothers as far as prepping for labor, care before and after delivery, helping with bonding/breastfeeding, and teaching about newborn care. I think it would be a lot of fun to weigh and check vitals on newborns, do their basic care and monitoring, etc. I could see myself doing level 1 and 2. Not sure about 3 yet (NICU).

Anyway... are any of you, or were any of you, nurses? What type? Did you enjoy it? OR nursing kind of sounds neat, too. I'd like to hear about your experience with any kind of nursing.

I have a BS in biology that took many years of hard work to get, and now can't really find any jobs with it. It seems like a lot of these classes could go toward nursing school. I had a 3.9something gpa. I have just been working coffee shop jobs, like I did during school, and while I enjoy this, it's not really fulfilling enough to do for my whole life. I've always wanted to do something important/make a difference and I think it would be pretty cool to be part of the most amazing and happy time in peoples lives and the birth of new life.

[amandarenee]

I'm not a nurse, but a BA in biology sure sounds like it would help you along! All of your pre-req's would be done, and though you might not be able to become an RN any faster, you might be able to only go part time, giving you the ability to still work and spend time with your little one. Taking care of my toddler (plus not having a car, the hubbs and I can't really afford a new one right now) is what had been holding me back from finishing my degree. But luckily my degree can be done mostly online now with the upgrades my local university has done, so I am fortunate enough to be able to go back to school this fall.

My mom worked in L&D while finishing nursing school, and she sure has some horror stories about the big mess giving birth creates. When I had my little boy about 2 years ago, it was in the back of my head the entire time, what kind of mess I was making for some poor RN-in-training to clean up afterward.