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What You Actually Need For Pumping At Work
1. A medium to large bag for all your supplies I personally preferred a backpack. There was plenty of storage space and it was easy to carry—some days I had my purse, my pumping bag, a lunch bag, a drink, and my breakfast to carry into work. 2. Milk storage bags or containers I used tommee tippee bottles like these for Kenely when she was at the sitter, but I also had 6 large bottles like this. I used these bottles to store my fresh milk and send to the sitter the following day instead of sending frozen milk. I ordered these lids to use for storage. The number of bottles you…
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Things I Wish I Knew Before Nursing School
1. Memorize normal lab values This is a major component of any foundational nursing course, which is typically taught as your first nursing class. I recommend memorizing the following lab values: WBC, Hgb, Hct, platelet count, Na, K, Ca, Mg, Phosphorus, pH, pCO2, HCO3, BUN, Creatinine, PT, PTT, INR, Glucose, and HgbA1C. If you have these already memorized it will make your first semester much easier, as well as future courses because you will always use this information (yes, even after graduation). Keep in mind that each nursing school/hospital may vary in their normal ranges by a slight amount. 2. Start taking practice NCLEX question quizzes Finding practice NCLEX questions online was…
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How To Help Your Baby Sleep
After a few weeks of inconsistent sleep, I was desperate for help & advice on how to help my baby sleep because I needed to sleep! This led to a lot of middle-of-the-night amazon purchases for anything that I thought might help her, as well as scouring Pinterest for hours at a time for any tip we could try. In hindsight, I found the following things to be most impactful: 1. Consistent wake up time When I went back to work, Kenley started going to a private sitter each day. Since my husband & I both leave the house at 6am each morning, this means she consistently is woken up at…
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Why We Decided to Foster
I’ve previously shared here that I dated someone with a child, that I’m a nurse, and that I’ve always wanted to be a mom. All of these things played a big role in my desire to be a foster parent. I guess I could give the cliché answer of “I loved kids so much that I just wanted to help them all” because that’s true, but my actual decision to foster took a lot more thought than that. I worked with pediatric patients for the first five years of my nursing career, and before that as a nursing assistant. As a pediatric nurse you see a lot of neglect/abuse that…
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Getting out of an Unhealthy Relationship
After calling off my engagement I spent a lot of time being single. I went on dates here and there, but it never really went anywhere. I constantly got asked when I was going to get married, didn’t I want a family, why hasn’t someone taken you off the market yet. All while also seeing the majority of my friends get married or have the first of their babies. That was a really hard time for me; I was so happy for my friends, but I was devastated that it wasn’t my turn yet. I remember being made to feel like I was “too-much woman” to attract a husband because…
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I Called Off My Wedding
While attending Campbellsville University for nursing school I was introduced to a great guy by a co-worker. At the time I was very focused on being successful in school and didn’t have time to commit to a new relationship, but I thought this would be a nice person to hang out with and do fun things together when I did have free time. As school progressed, I figured out how to balance my time and our relationship progressed. Over the next year we fell in love, got to know one another’s families, and began to dream of what a future together would look like. I knew a proposal was in…
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How Blake & I Met
Blake is three years younger than me. Never in my wildest dreams, did I think I would ever marry someone younger than me. I’ve always been considered “mature for my age” and thought I would most likely marry someone older than me, or at least my own age. But, as a good friend used to always tell me: “if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans”. From age 18 through 25 I had been in a series of crappy relationships and had spent a good amount of time being single. I was discouraged and frustrated—all I had ever wanted was to have a family of my own. …
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Completing my Master’s Degree in less than Six Months
Failing a semester of nursing school left a strong desire in my heart to one day be a nursing instructor. I recognized that nursing education needed more instructors that were passionate about teaching students who truly wanted to see them succeed. At the completion of my program at Campbellsville University I have my associate’s degree. I had a few options to achieve my MSN with would be required for me to teach one day. I could do an BSN-MSN program or get my BSN completed first and then do a separate MSN program. I researched multiple programs, but my bad experience with my initial program, compared to the fabulous experience…
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From Failing Nursing School to Receiving an Academic Reward
Many people who know me as a nurse now, are quite surprised to find out that I failed a semester of nursing school. I used to be embarrassed about it, but it’s honestly one of the things that’s made me the nurse that I am. It was third semester, I had just gone through a heart wrenching break-up, and because of my mediocre performance throughout the semester, I had to achieve a certain score on my final to pass the course. I have no idea what the score was, but it was a fairly high percentage, higher than I had scored on any test thus far in the semester. In…
Helping women have periods that don't suck!