MMA -- Day #3 -- Adventures in the Nursery....

SO this morning started off rather predictably. As in obstinate, stubborn & hard-headed didn't want to get out of bed this morning. Literally, after letting her alarm go off & be turned off, after going in & open all the blinds and cranking up the tunes to heavy metal music volume, she still didn't get up and pretended to be asleep through it all. So 5 minutes later she lost her blankets, her sheets, and her pillow. After another 5 minutes she still hadn't budged. So she got the choice of getting out of bed herself, or being carried to the kitchen & starting the day sitting on the time-out stool. Any guesses what happened???

Yup, kitchen here we come. Total of two more sessions of time out and she finally started moving. Oy vey! I started having really serious second thoughts about taking her to work today. Especially since I'd called ahead & learned that "doofus doc" had assigned me 12 patients & 3 circs; totally out of character since for the past 4 months he only ever assigns me 5-8 patients. I was feeling a bit exasperated before I even got started today. Michael's comment was that this sounded like intentional maliciousness.

So Michael & I worked out a plan that he'd drive to the hospital and pick her up after a good 4-6 hours there today. If she'd behaved then she could go swimming and maybe take her buddy from next door. If there was any misbehavior then a) I was taking the timer and I had a chair in my office ready for her and b) when Dad got her she would be going home and sitting on the stool until I came home.

In the car, she was feeling fairly chatty and we spent part of the drive analyzing the difference between being good & being bad. I think she'd finally starting to get the hang of it. Once we got to the hospital, we had a discussion about the ground rules for today and the final point was that I did not want to be sorry that I had brought her with me. It sunk in because she was just an angel for the 5.5 hours she was there. Apparently the experience made an impression too since Michael didn't get a word in edge-wise the entire way home. She was pretty google-eyed the entire time.

She paid very close attention while I was checking over the batch o' babies in the nursery, and she is not a fan of poopy diapers. She got to see quite the variety of baby poop too, so she got really good at saying "Ooooh! Yucky!!", which had the nursing staff just rolling with suppressed laughter. Tab was being very serious about this entire adventure, so everyone else was trying to be serious as well.

She watched, with great curiosity, me performing two circumcisions. I wasn't sure how this would go over, so I did ask her first if she wanted to watch, that there was blood involved, and she said "Yes!" So she got to sit on a tall stool about 4 feet away and watch to her hearts content. I had to really concentrate with that kind of scrutiny in the background, especially since she had such funny questions with perfect comic timing. "Why you do dat?!?" "Why baby cries?" "Why baby not cries?" "Why you hurt baby?" [Delivered just as I was injecting the lidocaine block which burns as it starts numbing.] And my personal favorite..."Oh Momma, Big OUCH!" just as I was doing the final snip-snip on the first boy. About this time one of the other local pedi's, Dr. PK. came in to do a circ for one of his boys, and he just had to ask if Tab was one of the new nursing students. "Of course! Haven't you noticed that they get younger every year?!" At any rate he was snickering so hard listening to Tab's comments for circ #2 that it took him over 25 minutes to get his own work done. At which point I decided to defer circ #3 to Sunday on a technicality. Funny stuff, all the way around let me tell you. Then one of the techs gave Tab some gloves and a clean set of hemostats to play with and she went to work perfecting her "hand balloon" skills.

She got to experience 1.5 hours of the paperwork part of my job, but she was mostly impressed that there were 2 computers on my work desk. Then while we waited for Michael to get there, she went with me to round from parent to parent. I had told her to stay close, don't touch anything, and only talk if we were out in the hallways and she was quite the little trooper; followed the rules to the letter. Discovered that she loves the alcohol hand rub and she really got into knocking on the doors and shoving me into the room so she could see who was next. Fascinating stuff for her as she was seeing some segments of society that she wouldn't ordinarily see. Big, BIG eyes for that adventure let me tell you. Met the 13 year old mom. Met the mom with a 4yo, 3yo,2 yo, 1 yo and now newborn. Got to see some really outlandish hairstyles. Got to one room where mom was having some bandages removed & it was a bit bloody so the nurse left her nursing student (a real one this time) to do the work and whisked Tab to the lounge for cookies & juice. Which is where Michael found her just charming the whole lot of them. (She was apparently being so sweet that it makes me want to gag - especially since I know what a demon she can be.... ) When I stepped back into the hall I found them being completely lost headed down a locked hallway. So we went back to the nursery, retrieved Tab's lunch & backpack, had a few more "meet & greet's" and then took them down the elevator to head back home. At that point I really thought I had about 3 more hours to go, but mercifully the last parents were very simple, the computer didn't eat any of my chart notes or patient files and I ended up leaving at 3:30pm, about an hour after them.

Tab's buddy next door wasn't home, so just the three of us headed to the pool. Took the camera to get some pictures for a "Thank you" gift I want to scrap for Ally, the lifeguard who has taught Tab to swim this summer. She's gone from the shallows with water wings to now diving into the 12 foot deeps with semi-decent form. Very cool stuff. My favorite 2 photos from today. (Didn't have a camera at the hospital -- intentionally decided that I didn't need a walking HIPPA violation with me....)