“I would be seriously crying before I went onstage. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the tour, putting on nine costume changes on a stage in front of 12,000 people every night. And I didn’t want people to know (I was pregnant). I didn’t want to become The Gwen Freak Circus Show – watch it grow onstage.” -Gwen Stefani

Please, Gwen. Try working in a MICU when you’re pregnant. Try caring for a patient in a tiny little ICU room that’s probably one tenth the size of your closet. And as for the crying? Try caring for patient after patient who is dying, who will die, and everything you do to care for this patient, you are prolonging this death, which also means that you are prolonging their suffering.

Actually it’s not all gloom and doom and hardship. In a way it’s kind of interesting. It’s strange to think that while you are coding a patient, your little baby is right there with you. You are pushing drugs, doing chest compressions, cardioverting, whatever, and you think about telling the little guy inside of you, “A contest between life and death was being fought and YOU were privy to it all. YOU WERE THERE!” Not many get to experience that.

And yet he probably didn’t really catch any of the experience, being too small and not fully developed yet. Or did he? I sometimes like to think that I can share brain waves with my little baby. After all we share everything else. Wouldn’t it be cool if babies could tune in to their mother’s brains the whole time they are in utero? And then once the cord is cut it’s just a distant memory. He would be constantly chuckling at my witty stream of conscious as I went about my tasks. And all this excitement would surely make him want to become a nurse or a doctor or an EMT. He would have felt that adrenaline rush, that feeling of bringing someone back to life…

Or else he would go running in the opposite direction. Believe me, either way I would understand.

Lately I’ve spent a lot of time caring for this dying patient. Same old story, multi-organ failure, advanced age, but we are doing everything to sustain his life. He has been unable to communicate his needs, even on the rare occasions when we have extubated him. Sometimes when I am caring for him, and alone in his tiny ICU room, I think, it’s just the three of us. And two of us (my patient and my baby) cannot tell me anything. But maybe they are communicating with each other…Perhaps there is a communion between the nearly dead and the nearly born. The funny thing is that this patient of mine is a pediatrician.

I imagine the conversation between the two of them.

BABY: Why are you so tired?
DOCTOR: All my life I have believed in the power of medicine to heal and now my beliefs are being tested.
BABY: Why can’t you just let go?
DOCTOR: Every day my family comes in and begs me to get better. I’ve never been able to deny their wishes.
BABY: So what about this persistent hiccuping? It doesn’t stop.
DOCTOR: Don’t worry. It will go away soon.
BABY: Well that’s good news. I better get back to my kicking now.

My co-workers have been so nice to me. People who just casually know me go out of their way to ask me how I’m doing. Everyone makes such a fuss over me. They go out of their way to make sure I do as little lifting as possible. And yes, the charge nurse will usually try to take it easy on me when choosing patient assignments.

Despite all of this, I’d rather not be working. A couple weeks ago I was really wishing I wasn’t working. I asked my nurse manager for one favor, to not schedule me for night shifts during my third trimester. No can do, was her answer. “If we did it for you we’d have to do it for everyone.” And why not do it for everyone? As I’ve said before, my unit has struggled with staff retention. I guess they figure secret pal programs are more effective.

But despite all my whining, I have to say my overall feeling is one of gratitude. I’m healthy, my unborn child seems healthy, and I have a wonderful loving, supportive husband. I’m not sure I can say the same for Gwen, who’s husband hasn’t produced a hit single since the 90’s.