Volunteering

For the past four Tuesdays I've spent my evenings volunteering at the University of Minnesota Fairview Hospital & Amplatz Children's Hospital. I sit at the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) info desk and help parents and visitors check in before heading into the NICU and direct people who come off the elevator either to the NICU or the Labor and Delivery Unit. Unfortunately there is not a lot to do and since I can't help the nurses with any paper work and I sit outside of the actual unit so I tend to twiddle my thumbs or read a book. However, sitting at that desk has reconfirmed my decision to go back to school to become a nurse on several occasions. I just want to do more!! Every night I've been there, the charge nurse is calling unscheduled nurses to see if they'll come in because they're short staffed and I just want to raise my hand and say, "I'll do it! I want to help!!" Then I remember, I not even close to being a nurse yet. Shoot.

When the nurses are talking at the desk I listen and make mental notes on things I want to look up and learn what they are talking about. Everything about the setting interests me and makes me really excited to learn it all. Or when you see soon to be moms and dads heading into the Labor and Delivery room because they are about to become parents - it's such a sweet moment. Every once in a while I get a glimpse of a newborn in a bassinet heading up with their mom up to the postpartum rooms on the fifth floor. So cute!

Then there are times when they're sending out a transport team to go and pick up a baby to bring them back to the hospital because they are having a lot of problems. Or like last night, the elevator door opened and there was a transport team member holding onto a gurney with a young boy laying on it. Turns out they were in the wrong wing of the hospital and they really needed to go to the bone marrow unit in the Children's Hospital. That boy should be outside playing with his friends, not in a hospital because he is sick.

My heart breaks everytime new parents come out of the NICU crying because their little one is lying in there, fighting to survive each day. I have found myself praying for every parent that comes out of that unit, that they would find the emotional strength to get through this difficult time and that the little ones would get better quickly so they could grow up outside of the hospital walls. Not every baby in the NICU is in critical condition and some are just a few weeks early so they want them to get a little bigger before they send them off into the world, but there are many in both circumstances.

In September I start my Mother Goose training where I'll be able to actually hold the babies in the NICU. I am so excited to do this and I think Joe is hoping it cures my baby fever that I've had for a while now. He can only hope haha. (Christina, I expect a good comment out of you on this one:) Although I see and hear a lot at the desk, I'm really looking forward to being a Mother Goose and talking with the baby, rocking and holding them.

This experience has been so rewarding although I really don't do much. Just being in the environment makes me want to be a nurse that much more. I want to help these little ones and take good care of them! Two years to go....two years.