Say what you will about my recent post stating that I am a conscientious objector…of course you are right, I am wrong. And while I am NOT as some would suggest, accusatory or superior, perhaps I am a bit defensive.
But can you blame me? What mommy on this planet wants another mom, especially one she actually admires and respects, to preach on all that is wrong with some moms’ choices…your choices. I’m human and like a child excluded from the playground games because she is different, it hurts a little to have another mom single out the choices a mom like myself has made as selfish and universally wrong in an attempt to prove her point to be right and the only way.
Mea culpa.
I am a weak human.
In my heart of hearts, I believe that my being a mother is truly a calling, a ministry. But I also believe that what I do outside of the home as an RN in the NICU is also a calling. I believe that God has called me to be there for families, for critically ill and fragile babies just as much as He called me to be the best mother I am (in my own inept way) to Holly, Zoë, Abigael, Jodie and Daniel. In the eyes of other mothers it will never be the best way but their opinion doesn’t matter much. My children and the people they are reflect the kind of parents they have.
If we are to believe Paul’s illustration that the Church is the body of Christ made up of various body parts with different functions then we must accept the fact that some body parts are actually designed to be multi-functional. Consider our vocal cords.
Vocal cords?
Yes, vocal cords.
I learned first hand just how important they are not from my A & P classes, not from my voice lessons. No, I truly understood the purposes of vocal cords thanks to my son Daniel and the fact that only his right vocal cord functions. Daniel’s left vocal cord is paralyzed. We are not 100% certain why but his doctors speculate that it could be related to a rare complication of the open heart surgery he had when he was only 21 days old or it could be related to his being ventilator dependent for the first ten weeks of his life which meant a tube allowing him to breathe kept his vocal cords separated. One ENT suggested the tube might have permanently damaged his left vocal cord when it was initially passed. He also suggested that perhaps the nerve that controls that vocal cord’s movement was permanently damaged when the initial incision was made to work on Daniel’s then thumbnail sized heart
Who knows?
But we do know that life is much harder when only one vocal cord functions. They are designed to of course to meet over the airway, vibrate and make sound as air passes over them. Sometimes the sound is so beautiful like when Andrea Bocelli sings and sometimes it is just a joyful noise. This is a part of our body designed to make sound and enable us to communicate through spoken word.
But the vocal cords serve an even more important purpose. Our vocal cords are the gatekeeper to our airway. Try taking a big gulp of your favorite liquid refreshment then swallow and simultaneously speak. You can’t do it. That choking that happens is your vocal cords slamming shut and protecting your lungs from filling up with that gulp of liquid refreshment you just took.
That is, we have learned, our son’s reality every time he swallows. Eating and drinking truly is work and a conscious effort for him as is making sound is. For him it potentially can be a death defying feat. Thanks to his right vocal cord adapting and learning to do the work of two vocal cords, he is able to do these things. He may never sing opera as his ENT counseled us but nothing is sweeter than when he warbles “Twinkle, twinkle little star.”
Forgive me for rambling a little off topic. I see myself as the vocal cords within the body of Christ. Yes, I have been called as a mother and I take this ministry of raising my children very seriously. But I have no doubt in my heart that God has also called me to be a nurse and to serve others in the NICU setting. God blesses me everyday that I work in this vocation caring for the tiniest and most fragile of human beings just as much as I am blessed as I care for and nurture my children.
Yes, I do work outside the home so that I may continue to be a good steward of the gift of my children, but I also work as a NICU RN as long as I feel called to minister to families like these in crisis. Gifted with mercy and healing, I will continue to answer the call to be there in the NICU setting as long as God calls me to do so.
Having preached on all of that permit me to share with you now another summer re-run, a post of mine from February 2005 titled “Why NICU?”


A comment added to my entry yesterday where I was venting about work a little got me thinking. Why nursing? Why neonatal intensive care?
First it goes back into the dark ages when I was a kid. I knew I wanted to be a nurse. Sciences, especially life sciences were what I did best and nursing as a career appealed because I would always have my hand in life sciences….who knew there was math in the picture too. LOL I seriously told one of my high school math teachers that I saw no reason why I had to learn this material because I had no intention of using it in my adult life…..I know he is somewhere laughing at me every time I mix and titrate a mcg/kg/min drip.
During that time the other motivation for me to choose nursing was I was in LOVE!!! You know, the kind of love where you practice writing your name and his together and yours with his last name. Yes, that kind. This love of mine was going to be a doctor and we both knew we were going to be married so it seemed only natural that I would go into nursing that way we could work together. :::::::::sigh::::::::: Well, Jeffrey Cox and I did not get married and based on his profile in Classmates.com he is not a doctor. I hope he is happy at least. Maybe he will show up at our (gulp) 25 year high school reunion this year and I will find out what he is doing these days. I bet he is a preacher like his daddy.
Despite putting college on hold for a few years to “find myself” I still was determined that I would be a nurse. I finally got going on that in 1987 right after Holly was born. Like a lot of the fresh faced nursing students I encounter these days, I wanted to be a nurse in labor and delivery. I did try to keep an open mind as one professor advised me that nursing is a very broad field with many areas of specialty and sub-specialty and I might find something else I was drawn to. But as I worked through med-surg, ortho, gerontology, sub-acute, CCU, MSICU, Peds, PICU, OR, Psych, labor and post partum, I knew I wanted to keep my focus on maternal child. I enjoyed every portion of my nursing education and clinical rotations but in each one I realized that none of them really fit me except maternal child. I felt in order to be an EXCELLENT nurse which, IMHO, all patients should have, I should stick to the area I felt most passionate about.
I was still determined that Labor was where I wanted to go, but after attending a delivery during that rotation with a completely unplanned negative outcome, I decided I should have a solid background in newborns, especially at risk newborns since I would be responsible for essentially two (or more) patients during that first and second stage of labor. During school I worked part time as a tech and floated between post-partum, nursery, pedi and short term surgery where I worked only with the infertility specialists assisting them with egg retrievals and embryo transfers. The staff and the docs got to know me and when it came time to look for an RN position I was offered a NICU position. The staff knew me well, encouraged me all through nursing school and it seemed wanted me to stay on board with them as an RN.
Some places will not even consider hiring a new grad directly into a level III NICU. I got lucky I guess. I was especially fortunate that where I was hired they had in place a solid new grad program in the NICU with intensive one on one teaching for ten weeks followed by buddy support for several months. The NICU is a highly specialized area and such training I believe is essential. Despite my first day fright of walking on the floor to watch an admission taking place of a 700 gram baby that would have easily fit into an adult’s hand, I thrived. It wasn’t two weeks later that I was caring for that same baby and following my preceptor’s instructions as I flipped her over with her ventilator tubing, multiple lines and monitoring devices attached to her tiny body. I still remember my preceptor leaning over and whispering in my ear to breathe…..I was so scared that first time that I was holding my breath for fear I would break that tiny, fragile body that weighed less than two pounds. My preceptor was afraid I would pass out from lack of oxygen.
As time went on, I loved the NICU and all the micropreemies more and more. I fit in perfectly with the tight community formed by the staff of RNs, RTs and neonatologists.
I was thrilled with working with the families. Nursing is all about promoting health and one key aspect is patient teaching. Patient teaching in an adult nursing setting frustrated me because the majority of adult patients just were not receptive to the idea that their lifestyle brought them to the hospital and now they must change certain aspects of their lifestyle. But in the NICU setting I learned that new parents are virtually empty vessels so eager to be filled with the knowledge of how to care for their babies, so eager to touch them, hold them, feed them and understand preemie behavior and ultimately what to do when the long awaited discharge day arrived. This was the kind of patient teaching I loved. I found my passion!
Four years after I started in the NICU, I was offered a position in Labor but after much thought I declined. The NICU was my niche.
Over the years in my nursing practice I have encountered nurses from other specialties who confess that they could never work in the NICU because those tiny 1-2 lb babies were just too scary. I usually would grin and reply that I could never see myself where they worked at because those big people scared me too.
Oh, there is one final reason for my choosing neonatology. At the risk of being too gross, it is the poop factor. It happens. Everyone does it and guess who cleans it up in a hospital setting? I figured if I have to I would rather do it on a patient a lot smaller than me.