Thursday, April 29, 2010

being a night shift nurse and a mom

I'm presently juggling three roles right now: mom, wife, and nurse. I have two very active daughters ages four and a-half, and 22 months. My husband works as a Bio-med technician in the daytime while I work as an ICU nurse during nights. We have a house in a very nice gated community and two cars. The only thing missing is a dog and then I guess you can already call us a family living the American dream. Life is good. Or is it? I guess if you talk about being blessed to have very beautiful and healthy kids and a loving husband, or if you talk about having one of the highest paid per/hr jobs in the land, I guess we are lucky. Thank you God for that! We are blessed. But that's looking at it in only one perspective.
Looking at my life microscopically will reveal that my life is HARD! Working nights isn't that great. Yes the pay is good but what do you get for it? Hardly any quality of life. Having to stay awake in the daytime is always a struggle especially if you have two little kids. I have no energy to cook, play, or pretty much do anything because my brain wants to sleep already. Many times I have fallen asleep while keeping watch over them. I sometimes wake up finding the house a complete disaster because one of the girls have flooded the bathroom floor because they were washing their hands or all the furniture and the floor completely sticky because one of them decided to clean up using a towel fully soaked with orange juice. Then the husband comes home (also tired from a whole day's work) seeing the disaster and asks me what have I done all day. Oh, and of course we have to order take-out because I had no energy to cook anymore.
Working days is not an option. Yes there's daycare, but I feel that we will just be working to pay for that thing. My husband said that he'd rather quit his job and he'll just take care of the kids since what he's making is almost the same as what we are going to pay the daycare center anyway. It is expensive as you guys may already know.
Please don't get me wrong. I've always loved being a nurse. There is satisfaction in taking care of people. I love teaching young nurses too. BUT working nights is taking it's toll in my home life. Some things have to change....

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