Trying to keep up my one a day postings, I found a bunch of stories I wrote just for my own pleasure about 25 years ago. Nobody has ever been shown this story before. I wonder if I could still be prosecuted. But you won't tell, will you?

When I was eighteen and looking for a summer job, I decided to apply to be a nurse's aide at a local hospital. I had already changed my mind about being a nurse, but I didn't think I needed to tell the hospital that. I would just tell them that I'd had a year's training to be a nurse, which of course was true.

I was accepted, and the first two weeks, a group of about 10 of us new recruits attended classes on how to do the job. We were issued with yellow nylon uniforms and wore these over white short sleeved blouses, and we had white caps just like nurses. It was an awful uniform. I hated it. The classes were on things like taking temperatures, making beds, emptying bedpans, measuring fluids accurately. It was all very easy and not at all unpleasant. We were taught how to give backrubs, and how to give bed baths. And then we were given our assignments.

What a joy. I was assigned to the maternity ward. If I had been asked my choice, it would have been that, or the children's ward. I was taken up to the 2nd floor and introduced to the nun in charge, Sister Clarice. She was short and young-middle aged, and very pleasant, but also very efficient and business-like. She welcomed me and introduced me in turn to the nurses and other aids on the ward.

For the first few weeks after that, my job was mainly in dealing with the new mothers.The maternity ward was a happy place most of the time. The mothers had already been through the horrors of labor, and I hadn't had to have anything to do with that, or with the birth. When they came to me they were relaxed and happy, relieved it was all over and so proud of their new babies.

My jobs were quite simple and easy. Each morning I brought them tea or coffee, then helped them up to the bathroom, with instructions about measuring their urine if that was required, then while they were out, I straightened their beds, or remade them if necessary. Then I brought in their breakfast trays. After breakfast, I tidied their rooms a bit and made sure everything was in order for the doctor's rounds. The babies were brought out to them by the nursery staff, and all we had to do with relation to them was to wheel them back to the nursery if the mothers didn't wish to have them by their beds, or if it was bottle time, or time for visitors. Then after lunch, we again took temperatures, and if the mothers wanted it, they'd get a backrub. Then more or less the same things again in the evening, with supper, temperatures, evening drinks, backrubs, and tidying up. It was an easy and fun job. The mothers liked me, and said I'd make a fine nurse. They told me I gave good backrubs. There were 3 shifts- 8 til 4; 4 til 12; and 12 til 8. I started out on the day shift but as soon as I knew the routine was put on the evening shift, which was even easier. I wasn't asked to do the night shift very often in those days, which was just as well, as I didn't like working all night and trying to sleep in the heat of the day.

Later in the summer, it was decided that I should learn to work in the nursery. I loved the little babies. There were two nurseries, the one for babies who were full term and had no difficulties, and the preemie nursery for the tiny and problematic ones who were in incubators and often fed by tubes. The first day in the nursery I just couldn't stop locking at the tiny perfect little beings. One of the nurses teased me about how longingly I was looking at them, how lovingly, as if they were all mine or I wished they were.

The jobs in the nursery were fairly routine too and not difficult. The babies were fed on demand rather than schedule. When they awoke we changed their diapers and their nightgowns, undershirts, sheets and blankets too, most of the time, because they tended to be profuse in their eliminations.  The nursery was kept very warm, but they were each wrapped in what was called the mummy wrap, very tightly in thin cotton blankets. Then we took them out to their mothers to be breast fed if that was the situation but in those days, few mothers were breast feeding. If they were bottle fed and it was daytime, we took a bottle out to the mother, assuming that she was well enough, that it wasn't visiting hours and that she wanted to. The bottles were prepacked and sterilized and we kept a supply in a warming machine, so they were always the right temperature for the feeds. When we changed a baby’s diaper, we were supposed to take its temperature rectally and record it. We also had to record when it fed, and how much it took, if it was bottle feeding. Newborn babies got only glucose water for the first 24 hours.

First thing each morning the babies had to have a bath, and when they were old enough to go out to the mothers, they were to do it, but we had to demonstrate to them how to do it for the first time. Each baby bassinet had a drawer in which there was a little pot for warm water, and a supply of cotton balls. We first washed the baby’s eyes out with plain water, one swipe only from the inside to the outside. Then we added some special baby soap to the water and proceeded to wash the rest of the baby. It was only a sponge bath, and more like playing dolls than anything else. The mothers were usually very eager to do it themselves, so after the first day we didn't have that job. The bassinets also had a supply of disposable diapers, undershirts, nighties, sheets and blankets so that each baby bed was equipped for being in the mother's room for most of the day. There was a paper bag on the side where she was supposed to put the soiled diapers for us to dispose of later.

So the daytime and early evening routine in the nursery was quite easy and pleasant. But the late evening and night time routine was much harder. Because the mothers needed their sleep, we didn't take the babies out to them, except for the several day old nursing babies. That meant that from about 10 until 7 the next morning all the babies were dealt with for all their needs by the nursery nurse and one aide.

Lois, the nurse who mainly did the night time duty was good fun. She had been doing it for many years and obviously had her own rather casual system for dealing with crying babies. We were supposed to hold each baby when we fed it, and to take a good long time over the process, perhaps 15 minutes for each 3-4 ounce feed. But when there were 30 babies in the nursery, and half of them were crying at once, it just didn't seem to work. So we propped the babies’ bottles. We rolled up a blanket and put it under the bottle to hold it at the right angle. So we could each be supposedly feeding about 4 babies at once. We'd have each propped baby's bed near to where we were sitting feeding the noisiest one, so that we could act quickly in case the baby should choke. It wasn't a very good solution, but Lois said it was the only way, so I went along with it. We burped and changed each baby even if they had been propped.

Another thing we did that we weren't supposed to do is that we sometimes bottle fed nursing babies. If they came back from their mothers and still cried, we were supposed to just give them glucose. But Lois said it wouldn't hurt them to have some milk, since their mothers obviously at that stage didn't yet have enough milk to satisfy them. We did other things that we shouldn't do too. I remember one very hot and humid night when we opened the window. That was very much against the rules. And in future weeks, when a baby had a cold, the father reported us for having a window open, and Lois denied it firmly. I wasn't asked and didn't volunteer any information on the subject.

I did a lot of stupid things those nights. I was so tired. After 5 days of not sleeping during the daytime because it was too hot, I would be so whacked at night, I just didn't know what was going on. Lois let me lie down in the bed reserved for the doctors near the labor wards sometimes. And I'd sleep through the coffee break we were supposed to have. One time I was so sleepy I took the wrong crying baby to the wrong nursing mother. She did notice the difference, and I made the right swap back. And on another occasion I was supposed to put a new baby near the window for a  father to see, and put the wrong baby out. The babies were labelled correctly, but I just hadn't checked the name on the bed with the name on the bracelet.

One of Lois' jobs was to autoclave the glass instruments that she used in the preemies’ feeds. But sometimes she told me to do it, if she was busy. I didn't realize- just didn't think- and once put a lot of plastic disposable items in with the glass items to be autoclaved. Of course the plastic melted all over and ruined the glass things and made a mess in the autoclave. Sister Clarice got up in arms over that, and Lois firmly denied any knowledge of it. I did tell Lois it was me when I realized what the fuss was about, but I don't know if she told Sister.

After I'd been working at the hospital for some time I decided I'd like to see a birth. So one evening when we weren't too busy in the nursery I got dressed up in a sterile gown, and was scrubbed for a delivery. Interestingly enough the lady who was about to deliver was known to me as a church member, Mrs. W, and her husband was a friend of my dads. She was having her 8th baby. I just stood in the background, with my eyes as big as saucers, no doubt, while the nurse put her legs in the stirrups.

The lady was in her early 40's, I should think, and wasn't alarmed by the procedure having been through it all so often before. Her obstetrician had been called but everyone was betting that he wouldn't make it on time, And Barbara, the delivery nurse was getting ready to do the delivery when he finally showed up. He was very gruff and what I considered insensitive in the way he handled the lady. He took the sterilizing solution and just poured it over the birth area, and I'm sure it was cold, and it certainly made a mess. He made rude jokes with her, and she seemed quite happy with his way of doing things. The baby came quickly and she was a girl. I was amazed at the size the woman grew to before the baby delivered and the student nurse who was in helping as well, said I had this disbelieving look on my face. But all went well and the doctor breezed off to have a drink, and the nurses cleaned up the lady and I went back to take care of the babies. I was very pleased the next day when I went around to see how the lady was getting on because she told me that she had named the baby after me and the delivery nurse - Barbara Jean the poor kid.

There was another aide that sometimes helped with litt1e babies called Jenny. She thought it was very clever to carry the babies under her arm like a football. The mothers greatly resented her methods and manners. Even when I was tired, I wasn't as bad as Jenny.

Sometimes I fed the preemie babies who weren't in incubators, but mostly that was Lois' job. It was very sad to see these little tiny babies struggling to survive. They were fed by inserting a tube into their stomach and first testing it to make sure it wasn't in the lungs by putting the end of the tube in water to see if it bubbled. Then the milk was poured into a small funnel which was connected to the tube and the milk was supposed to drip slowly into the baby’s stomach. But when we were busy and Lois didn't have time to stand around waiting for the slow drip, she used to squeeze a plunger bulb into the top of the funnel and the milk all rushed into the baby's stomach at once. I'm sure that was a very bad thing to do, but the babies all seemed to survive, and Lois had been doing the job for years, so I didn't feel it was up to me to tell on her. The babies had to be changed by reaching through the holes on the sides of the incubators which were covered in a plastic material. It was so hard and yet exciting to change the little thing which wasn't any bigger than the palm of one's hand. I got to do that sometime.

There were only about 2 babies that I remember that were critically ill during the time I worked there. One baby was a large preemie, and looked fairly healthy at birth, but within a few hours developed hyaline membrane disease. This is a breathing problem and was usually fatal. The pediatritian came to see him every few hours, and made a drip solution which ran into a vein in his foot, which was attached to a sort of wooden ski. The baby survived after a very traumatic night, of stopping and restarting breathing again, many times. But the dedication of that doctor was certainly something to applaud.

Another time a doctor I didn't particularly like came to see a small baby which was having problems. This baby wasn't in the incubator, but just in a normal bassinet in the preemie unit. Lois called the doctor to come again and he had to come out from a party, and he resented having to come. He examined the baby and said it was unlikely to live, and then went away again. Sure enough before morning it had died, and was turning black before we went off the shift. I don't know why it died, but I felt the doctor couldn't have cared less, in great contrast to the pediatritian who had fought so valiantly for the other baby's life.

I did have a few traumatic episodes when I worked there. The first was shortly after I'd started, when I was working with the mothers who was a vague acquaintance of mine, being slightly older, and coming from the neighbouring town. Karen wasn't very old, maybe 20. She was in the special recovery room that the mothers first went into after the births for maybe 8 hours or so, until the nurses were sure they were recovering normally. I was on the floor alone, as it was lunchtime and the other nurse had gone downstairs to eat. The light came on in Karen's room to indicate she wanted something, and when I went in to see what was happening, she was vomiting into an emesis basin, so the problem was very apparent. Her husband was in with her, and the smell made me feel sick myself, so I said, "Just a minute, I'll get somebody to deal with that." And I went down to the nursery and said I'd stay with the babies while the nurse there dealt with the vomiting Karen. I knew that I couldn’t deal with it.

Nobody told me off about that but I felt it showed that I wasn't really cut out to be a nurse when the going got rough.

Another panic situation was one time when the labor beds were full up and another soon-to-be mother was put in the extra room just across from the nursery. Because her room was not in the labor section they couldn't see that she had her light on. So I went to answer her light and found that her baby was half born and there she was all alone. So again, I rushed into the nursery and took over there while one of the nurses helped with the rest of her delivery. I was so relieved that I had someone to turn to that time.

It wasn't very often that women lost their babies. I can remember of only a few instances, but remember one in particular. This lady was very overweight, not just from the pregnancy, but naturally so. She knew when she came in that the baby was already dead, but since it was more or less full term, it was induced to be delivered as if it were a normal birth. The lady was in labor for hours and hours. The reports kept coming out that the baby just would not arrive. We heard that the doctors had to cut it out of her, not in the normal Caesarian method, because the birth process had gone beyond that, but piece by piece and the report was that the baby weighed 14 lbs. The process went on all night, and when I went to deal with the lady the next day, I felt so sorry for her. She was depressed but not too bad, so when I asked her if she felt up to taking a shower, she said she would. When I got her in the shower room, I waited outside and before long heard an enormous crash. She had fainted. So I got several of the nurses to help and we got her into a wheelchair and eventually back to her room. She had a lot of friends around to visit her later that day, and they brought presents for her, rather than her baby and she went home after another day or so.

And there were a few unmarried mothers some who were keeping their babies, and were treated normally, except that they were in another part of the ward from the married mothers; and those who were giving their babies up who were not allowed to see their babies or anybody else's baby and were hurried home as soon as possible.

I remember one time when I brought a new mother her baby to breast feed, and she didn't have a clue how she was supposed to do it. And I didn't knew what to say to her or how to explain the process. So again, I passed the buck onto one of my nurse colleagues. When I first started the job, I asked Lois how the milk came out of the mother's breasts. I thought somebody had to make a hole in the breast somehow for the milk to get out. I don't think she ever answered me, just looked embarrassed and changed the subject.

So now you know. When you go to have your babies, keep a close watch on the staff - especially the eager young ones. But, of course, all that all happened a long time ago in America. I’m sure it wouldn’t be like that now in Britain.