nurseavocado

[nurseavocado]

[nurseavocado]

Thousands of premature infants were saved from certain death by being part of a Coney Island entertainment sideshow.

At the time premature babies were considered genetically inferior, and were simply left to fend for themselves and ultimately die.

Dr Martin Couney offered desperate parents a pioneering solution that was as expensive as it was experimental - and came up with a very unusual way of covering the costs.

It was Coney Island in the early 1900’s. Beyond the Four-Legged Woman, the sword swallowers, and “Lionel the Lion-Faced Man,” was an entirely different exhibit: rows of tiny, premature human babies living in glass incubators.

The brainchild of this exhibit was Dr. Martin Couney, an enigmatic figure in the history of medicine. Couney created and ran incubator-baby exhibits on the island from 1903 to the early 1940s.

Behind the gaudy facade, premature babies were fighting for their lives, attended by a team of medical professionals.To see them, punters paid 25 cents.The public funding paid for the expensive care, which cost about $15 a day in 1903 (the equivalent of $405 today) per incubator.

Couney was in the lifesaving business, and he took it seriously. The exhibit was immaculate. When new children arrived, dropped off by panicked parents who knew Couney could help them where hospitals could not, they were immediately bathed, rubbed with alcohol and swaddled tight, then “placed in an incubator kept at 96 or so degrees, depending on the patient. Every two hours, those who could suckle were carried upstairs on a tiny elevator and fed by breast by wet nurses who lived in the building. The rest [were fed by] a funneled spoon. The smallest baby Couney handled is reported to have weighed a pound and a half.

His nurses all wore starched white uniforms and the facility was always spotlessly clean.

An early advocate of breast feeding, if he caught his wet nurses smoking or drinking they were sacked on the spot. He even employed a cook to make healthy meals for them.

The incubators themselves were a medical miracle, 40 years ahead of what was being developed in America at that time.

Each incubator was made of steel and glass and stood on legs, about 5ft tall. A water boiler on the outside supplied hot water to a pipe running underneath a bed of mesh, upon which the baby slept.

Race, economic class, and social status were never factors in his decision to treat and Couney never charged the parents for the babies care.The names were always kept anonymous, and in later years the doctor would stage reunions of his “graduates.

According to historian Jeffrey Baker, Couney’s exhibits “offered a standard of technological care not matched in any hospital of the time.”

Throughout his decades of saving babies, Couney understood there were better options. He tried to sell, or even donate, his incubators to hospitals, but they didn’t want them. He even offered all his incubators to the city of New York in 1940, but was turned down.

In a career spanning nearly half a century he claimed to have saved nearly 6,500 babies with a success rate of 85 per cent, according to the Coney Island History

In 1943, Cornell New York Hospital opened the city’s first dedicated premature infant station. As more hospitals began to adopt incubators and his techniques, Couney closed the show at Coney Island. He said his work was done.

Today, one in 10 babies born in the United States is premature, but their chance of survival is vastly improved—thanks to Couney and the carnival babies.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/23/how-fake-docs-carnival-sideshow-brought-baby-incubators-to-main-stage/

Book: The strange case of Dr. Couney

New York Post Photograph: Beth Allen

Original FB post by Liz Watkins Barton

[nurseavocado]

Earlier last year, I remember reading somewhere that IUFDs weren’t increasing but that wasn’t what we saw on the floor. So I find it interesting that this research is finally coming out.

[nurseavocado]

The good days far outweigh the bad days in labor and delivery, but the bad days are really bad

[nurseavocado]

Me in my patients room charting and the sounds coming from her when she’s contracting are very sexual sounding.

[nurseavocado]

I didn’t write this, but THIS! I’ve heard so many times about how labor nurses have it easy right now. And while I’m not in the ER or ICU, I’ve had plenty of positive patients. It’s a nightmare. I don’t even want to share this on my own page because I have so many crazy family members who think it’s all a hoax, masks don’t work and that people die anyway. It makes me rage.

🗣

During this pandemic friends, family, patients, nurses from other specialities have asked “How is everything going?”, “At least you are in Labor and Delivery!” “You are lucky to not take care of covid patients.”

Let me start off by saying pregnancy is something that worsens and even masks diseases, such as covid. The CDC released in November that “pregnant women are at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 compared to non-pregnant women. Additionally, pregnant women with COVID-19 might have an increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes”.

There has been emergency deliveries for covid positive mothers because their respiratory status is rapidly declining affecting their baby (the baby relies on the mamas oxygenation to survive), or in situations where covid positive mothers are stable after delivery, then suddenly they aren’t. Now we take a trip to the ICU because the moms oxygen saturation’s are dropping fast-even on the maximum oxygen we can provide. These are usually otherwise healthy mothers that rapidly declining.

Labor and delivery is different. It’s hard to socially distance and put our self’s before our patients. When a patient comes through triage screaming in pain saying she needs to push, our first question is not “Any cough, fever, loss of taste or smell,?” It’s “Any complications with this pregnancy or with past ones? What baby is this for you? Any bleeding? Do you think your water broke? How many weeks are you? Allergies?” Everyone rushes into the room: nurses, doctors, & techs to set up. Warmer ready, IV placed, covid swab done, delivery cart set up, supplies gathered, consent signed...we do as much as we can in the first 5 minutes to get ready for the delivery. Whether the mom has covid or not is unknown to us at this point, we are more concerned about a healthy mom and baby.

We are right in a patients face when they are sitting for an epidural, we are helping the patients cope with labor pains, flipping patients into all positions to help their baby tolerate labor, holding a leg, making sure all hands are in deck when there is a hemorrhage or a code, and being there consoling patients after a loss of a baby.

With all this going on, we are trying to make this the best experience and a special day for the parents who are bringing a child into this uncertain world...

We love our jobs, but keep in mind labor and delivery nurses do not hold babies all day, and it’s not all rainbows and butterfly’s for us....the virus affects our patients and staff too!

[nurseavocado]

You ever come across an old post and think how simple life was back when you wrote it?

[nurseavocado]

Halp!! Advice!!

I was just approached about training for charge nurse this morning by my manager. I’m very hesitant and she realizes this but asked me to think about it because my weekend needs more charge nurses.

This is a new hospital that I started in July 2020. My L&D job before, I was there for 2.5 years. One of our team leads (at my old hospital) was really trying to convince me to apply for charge there but I said no.

I’m just nervous. I feel like I still ask for a lot of help, which I know isn’t a bad thing. But we have a lot of new nurses. And I love being a resource for them and I feel like a lot of them look to me for advice.....but I’m not sure I’m ready to be the HBIC (head bitch in charge)

Also.... I already do a lot of things just as transport team, precepting and OB triage that takes me away from being a plain old labor nurse. This will add one more....

I also don’t feel like I really know all the providers like I did at my old hospital. I’m afraid they won’t respect me. And I’m afraid senior staff won’t respect me either being so new.

I’m so scared 😖

what were some deciding factors for you charge nurses out there? How’d you know you were ready?? What would you recommend I request in order to help me acclimate to the position? HALP.

[nurseavocado]

I’m watching CSI, which was a show I loved when I was in middle school. And I’m just thinking how when I was in middle school, I wanted to be a CSI. Then in high school I wanted to be a coroner and I specifically remember saying “I don’t want to work with live people. That’s a lot of responsibility”. (Not that coroners don’t have a lot of responsibility)

Now I’m a nurse. Weird how things work. (In another life, I think I’d be a forensic pathologist, not a coroner)

[nurseavocado]

I’M EXHUASTED.

we had an OB hemmorrhage tonight. It was a newer nurse’s patient and I helped her the whole time. It actually went really well for as terrible as it was. She delivered vaginally. Then needed a Bakri. That didn’t work. Then they tried a D&C. That didn’t work. So they had to do a hysterectomy. The patient was okay with it cause she has a ton of children and doesn’t want anymore. She lost like 3L of blood. 🤯 but all is well now.

So yeah. I’m fucking tired!

[nurseavocado]

[nurseavocado]

After a few weeks in the making... (aka studying my ass off)

I can say I’m certified in Inpatient Obstetric Nursing!!

I’m an RNC-OB!!!!

[nurseavocado]

As I lay wide awake in bed.

[nurseavocado]

How’s the COVID situation in your neck of the woods? At my facility the cases are growing slowly but all asymptomatic followed by a swift recovery.

I feel as thought our areas are similar! Tons of asymptomatics. But I have seen a good amount of admissions for severe symptoms.

[nurseavocado]

I got floated to postpartum to help out for 4 hours.... interesting to see how the otherside lives.... hahaha

[nurseavocado]

I’m done with orientation!

The new job is going well!

I had a beautiful nurse delivery on my last night of orientation. Mom was involuntarily pushing and didn’t feel a thing cause of the epidural. It was a nice calm and controlled delivery that the doctor just didn’t have time to make it to!

I feel like I’ve had a good mix of everything and that it’s still gonna take some learning to find everything on the unit and figure out their processes but it’s good!

I’m planning on taking the class to get my certification in Inpatient Obstetrics. That class is on 9/17. I’m excited to jump into that! I feel like things are going well for me!

[nurseavocado]

Update on my Life Update:

I got the job ya’ll!!! I start 6/29. The managers seem super nice. I’m making more money. They’ll pay for my RNC class and test entirely AND pay more me for having it. And!!! A bunch of my nursey friends from my current work place are also moving over!! A dream come true.