This was spurred by seeing someone’s comment about a nurse telling her that right away, while still in the hospital after giving birth, that some localized breast pain she was having was simply hormones. It ended up that the woman actually had plugged ducts, which resulted in mastitis, and she proceeded to get it once again within her little-one’s first 3 weeks.

Some nurses are terrible. I’m located in Canada and our nurses are unionized and understaffed...not sure if those reasons are why some are like this, but many are just so lackadaisical and don’t bother to really look in to things to help.

We had *one* great nurse during the day, our first day in the Mother/Baby department, and then *one* night-nurse who was wonderful for the full night after, before our 24 hours assessment time was complete. The other nurses all would ignore or say they didn’t know, when we would have mild concerns or questions to ask or answer them with something we thought seemed strange. Then, the “nice” nurse would come around and we would ask her the same question (which we were really hoping to ask her in the first place anyways but she hadn’t been around for a while so we just settled for the inattentive ones lol). She would have a completely different answer, with more facts to go along with and then she’d go get us pamphlets if she could find something that was applicable to our question. Or, if she didn’t know, she’d say she’d go to ask someone and then actually come back with an answer...just going that extra mile to be helpful and help us feel confident as new parents again. My hubby has a 9-yr-old son and I have two girls 8 & 6, so the process isn’t new for us, just not fresh in our minds. So when we had questions, we’d feel almost sort of foolish in the first place, and then be made to feel even worse when we’d get the quick “duh”-answers, or they’d discount our concerns making us feel like we were crazy for wanting an explanation about something or want to better understand other things.

We also had an enormous jerk as an anesthesiologist during delivery and an incompetent tech who came around to do our baby’s bloodwork the morning we were discharged, but I will make a separate post for these 😊

It sucks when nurses don’t care to look into things and make us feel silly or dumb for asking. We only do this process a few times in our life...they observe hundreds - even thousands of scenarios in their time working in the department...why can’t they draw from their experiences with other patients and do some investigating, or show compassion to their patient and offer help...just in case that ISN’T just hormones?? I understand when they are short-staffed that they get called in for extra shifts and might be tired, but when you work in an environment that calls you to be compassionate or informative for the people your job has you “serving”, why are there so many ppl who don’t fit the bill? I understand that is not a service industry, but you “work-with” your co-workers, while “helping” the patients. That seems to me like there is such a profound need to have a servant attitude towards the patients who come into your unit. I know it’s just a job, but your job is to provide care with knowledge you have that the patients do not possess. If your education and knowledge were not valuable and a necessity, then they’d just have a bunch of random civilians do on-the-job training and be all set.

Please don’t blast me for ignorance of the industry; I have many nurse-friends, and understand and hear about the crappy hours and conditions of their employment, but it’s a career they chose and they strive to treat their patients as well as they can and to be as helpful and comforting as possible. Unfortunately, none of them work in Mother/Baby, but other departments which require just as much compassion and patience for their patients.