Putting the Children to Sleep

This is my first week on my new rotation at the Children's Hospital. I have a 3 month rotation here, and I must admit that I AM TERRIFIED. The responsibility of anesthetizing kiddos is enormous. I mean, one minute they are jumping off the table, and the next, they are not breathing. Somehow we are supposed to find the happy medium between these two extremes. While children are very resilient in so many ways, their new, little bodies have little reserve for trauma, blood loss, dehydration, hypothermia, and other stressors, that giving them "sleepy medicine" is not something to be taken lightly. I'll stop there so that I don't freak out all the parents out there whose children may have surgery in the near or distance future. Rest assured, the children are so well taken care of, and that every single person whom I have encountered at this hospital has been extremely kind and attentive to the children. It is a very pleasant atmosphere- a nice change of pace from the other OR that I had been working, where people were generally obnoxious and sarcastic.

My last rotation was Neurosurgery. It, too, was a stressful rotation. It was not rocket science, but IT WAS BRAIN SURGERY, literally. Tumors were removed, aneurysms were clipped, and blood clots were evacuated, all from the brain. Yikes. So, I was so very stressed out during those cases, but now the newness is behind me, and I actually feel more comfortable with these cases. Not that they are not still stressful, just less unfamiliar. I can deal with the stressful situations more methodically now. I just hope that I feel this way about the Pediatric cases soon.

Putting my own children to sleep is yet another stressor in my life. Actually our 6 year old son is pretty easy to put to bed. It is the 3 year old daughter who is more challenging. Our nighttime routine consists of a video, timed so that it would end at 8:00. Then we all go upstairs. Here is where the inconsistencies are. We usually read books all together in our bedroom, say prayers, then bring the kids to each of their own rooms to go to sleep. But we don't always take the kids to their rooms. Sometimes, we let them sleep in our bed, usually when only one of us is home (ie, the other is working). We know that the inconsistency makes it difficult for our daughter to readily agree to sleep by herself, so we are working on routinely making her sleep in her own bed. It is just so tempting, for me particularly, to snuggle up to my babies when my husband is working late. I rationalize by telling myself that they are not going to be this small forever, and one day, they will not want to cuddle in bed with me. But at 2:30 in the morning, two hours before my alarm is going to go off, when I have cute little feet kicking me in the side, waking me up, I am reminded of why we want the children to sleep in their own beds. So for now, we send them to their own beds with much protesting, and save the snuggling for right before bed.

All the bedtime angst has also made it difficult for me to keep up with "Survivor: Cook Island." I watched the first episode, and half of last night's, and have just read the recaps of the other 2 episodes. I just realized last night that the groups were reshuffled, and no longer divided by race, which has made me lose some interest.

Getting ready for Halloween. Our son wants to be a dinosaur, which we are still looking for. Our daughter wants to be Spider Man -this from the little girl who insisted on buying the pink, sparkly princess shoes the other day, and whose favorite outfit is her Dora princess dress. Well, I can't complain that she is too girly, nor can I complain that she is a tomboy, can I?