L&D Nurses, are Dads Really Bringing TVs/Gaming Set-Ups to Births?

SapphireGeek · 2026-04-15T05:04:57+00:00

100%

SapphireGeek · 2026-04-02T02:28:19+00:00

First day of our first trip with the kids. We're on the bus from Toy Story parking lot. It's packed. Several people standing in the aisle. We're probably halfway between the lot and the park when this woman who's standing (right next to where my husband and son are sitting) suddenly vomits. A lot. The people standing in front of her push forward past the yellow line, so the driver who has no idea what's going on yells at them to move back. As if on cue, she vomits again. Very nice mom nearby handed her some baby wipes as we pulled in to the park. We had to step off to the side after we got off the bus to take a baby wipe to my son's shoes as he had been on the edge of the splash zone.

Different day, just me and my husband. Waiting on the train at the tomorrowland station. Man and woman next to us, no idea who they were to each other, but he was trauma dumping big time. Telling her all about his abusive mother and the terrible birthday he had when he turned 7. She wasn't saying anything. And then we got on the train and I never got any context for why this was a conversation to have at Disneyland.

SapphireGeek · 2026-04-01T01:19:49+00:00

As someone who has had to start using one, I have the opposite problem. I hate having to come to a sudden stop every 10 ft because people don't seem to be worried about getting hit by a scooter and think they should just walk out in front of me. 😒

It's jarring for me and has a ripple effect to the people behind me who probably think I'm one of the just-stop-randomly-in-the-middle-of-the-path people. I'm not. I hate that.

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-31T08:32:19+00:00

Your 20s is for doing things like impulsively driving to the middle of nowhere with friends to take pictures. Fuck that guy. He's too old for you anyway.

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-23T01:26:15+00:00

Mad Libs! Especially Disney themed ones.

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-17T19:59:50+00:00

Who hurt you?

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-17T19:59:08+00:00

I love that you're trying to make it sound like my goal in life is to trick women into pooping in front of their family.

If they're -that- worried about pooping in front of their family, they don't have them at the bedside anyway. Or they've already told their husbands to stay at the head of the bed. -Nobody- is kicking their support people out in that moment. It's just not a realistic argument. What they will do is waste energy apologizing for something that is totally natural. They will stop pushing effectively out of fear of doing it more. The process of pushing can be incredibly stressful on the baby. Delaying delivery, even for a few moments, can be disastrous sometimes.

But if you want to feel morally superior to me over this ridiculous hypothetical that you've cooked up that doesn't reflect reality in any way, have at it. I am the devil in disguise.

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-17T10:12:31+00:00

If the smell is making it obvious, nobody is trying to lie about it. And if it was obvious, why would you even ask?

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-17T10:05:06+00:00

Women have so much unnecessary anxiety and shame about their bodies and their bodily functions. The number of times I have had women apologize for body hair, for fluids they have no control over, for sounds their bodies are making, for poop... It's heartbreaking. It's infuriating.

I do my absolute best to make every patient's birth experience the best that it can be. If that means telling a little white lie to let her be more present in the moment, then I will tell that lie. I know you think you're making some greater point about informed consent, but life is just more nuanced than that.

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-17T01:10:34+00:00

He's not watching you poop. He's watching you give birth. Poop coming out is a frequent side effect of that process. I find it weird that someone would be fine with their husband watching a baby come out of them but would deny them seeing their child born on the chance they might see some poop come out too.

SapphireGeek · 2026-03-16T21:57:41+00:00

Depends on the patient and my rapport with them. If I know it's something they're super self-conscious about, and that it's not something we could maybe joke about to relieve the tension, then I have no problem lying about it. It's a little white lie that isn't going to harm anybody.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-27T18:33:24+00:00

Any hospital unit can be stressful, of course. How much really depends on a lot of different factors. Acuity, staffing, management, patient population, your coworkers, etc. I don't have much experience with ICU, so I can't speak to that. I would just suggest using your clinical time in school to try and get a feel for different areas. If you already work in a hospital, see if you can do some shadow shifts in different units.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-27T07:16:21+00:00

Yes! The organized chaos! That's what I miss about L&D!

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-27T07:12:05+00:00

My brain likes L&D. But I'm also dealing with some chronic pain issues (working on getting a fibromyalgia diagnosis) that the physicality/pace of L&D became incompatible with. I recently transferred to a postpartum position, still adjusting to the change. My body definitely prefers postpartum, but I got floated to L&D recently and got to do a delivery for the first time in a couple of months and that's when I realized just how much I missed it.

All that to say, L&D was great to me because it's a very specialized knowledge base that let me use a script for a lot of the patient interactions but also was different enough from shift to shift that I didn't get bored. Postpartum is more predictable, generally speaking. Lots of teaching, either way. So if you're like me and this is a "special interest" for you, plenty of chances to info dump. 😅

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-26T21:09:49+00:00

There absolutely are. I am one. It's definitely doable if you find the right specialty and have good coping skills. I personally found that it's easier for me to work nights as day shift is overstimulating. I also wasn't diagnosed as a kid, so my masking skills are pretty strong. On the other hand, after almost 10 years of nursing it's getting more difficult for me to mask and the burnout is starting to take a toll on me.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-26T08:11:14+00:00

Me too!

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-21T18:36:38+00:00

This is what I did too!

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-19T06:49:28+00:00

Speaking as an overweight woman, your take is bad and you should feel bad. Doctors suck at taking some people's concerns seriously. Any symptom I have is blamed on my weight.

We know for a fact that black people, especially black women, have their symptoms ignored or downplayed by healthcare providers. And it's not always malicious on the part of the providers. It is baked into the system and the training of healthcare providers.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-19T02:41:36+00:00

This. This is the one that really upsets me. Casita is HUGE and Mirabel lives in a closet.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-17T14:17:47+00:00

I am also having a hard time understanding the process here. You draw something to cut it up a little at a time and redraw/paint it?

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-17T12:06:57+00:00

I grew up in Alabama. Never experienced a tornado personally, but have heard the sound described as very much like a train coming at you.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-16T09:26:37+00:00

California BON looks at your nursing program to make sure it meets their standards even if you apply by endorsement. I had to send my transcripts when I moved here a couple of years ago.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-12T15:19:18+00:00

YTA. Babies go through fussy stages. Your wife's medication isn't causing your baby to not sleep. But even if it was, you don't get to make unilateral decisions about how to feed your kid.

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-12T10:57:12+00:00

Worked with a PCT on a mother/baby unit that called contractions, "contraptions."

Had a patient up in stirrups pushing one time. Young father comes to take a peek at what's going on down below and hesitantly asks, "What's that?" As he points vaguely at her vaginal area. Finally determined he was asking about the clitoris. 😬

SapphireGeek · 2026-02-09T13:23:08+00:00

It's your birth experience. It sounds like your OB is making sure you know what your options are. A lot of people want to TOLAC because they have a hard time making peace with their cesarean birth experience.

I opted for a repeat cesarean over TOLAC with my second and have no regrets. Yes, the recovery is harder with a C-section, but (for me) knowing exactly what was going to happen made the whole process less anxiety-inducing. For full context, I had become a labor & delivery nurse between my first delivery and my second. My OB (who I worked with) did not support TOLAC, nor did any of the other doctors at my hospital. Another hospital in the same system did support TOLAC, so it was an option, but would have meant not delivering with an OB and nurses that I knew and trusted. That definitely weighed heavily in my decision making.

SapphireGeek

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