r/NICUNurses

currently 34 weeks pregnant and having bad panic attacks over literal everything bagels.... for starters, I am perscribed and approved by both obgyn and psychiatrist to take 5mg Adderall, 40mg prozac and 5mg busbar during my pregnancy. I decided myself to go off of the adderall at 29 weeks because I went on maternity leave. I then unfortunately found an article where moms tested positive for opiates due to consuming everything bagels and cps got involved. I want to clarify I have never used drugs but had a craving for everything bagels the almost my whole pregnancy. I ate them alot throughout my 1st, 2nd and part of my 3rd trimester. When I read this I figured I just wouldnt eat them close to birth but then I got to thinking and wondered if the poppy seeds could also set off meconium and umbillical chord test. Usually those arent routinely tested but I do have a perscription for Adderall which from what google said "its AI so gotta take it with a grain of salt" might flag in their system to automatically drug test my newborn since its a controlled substance. So my question here is, has anyone taken adderall throughout pregnancy and gotten flagged to have their newborn tested? And does anyone At. All. Know if everything bagels can cause a false positive on meconium and umbillical drug screen? If anyone at all has answers this would help reduce so much anxiety for me. I live in midlands SC which laws here are a little rough.

I’d like to say this story for the 1st time. I had @ 32 weeks mo-di identical brothers. Both in nicu, one for 4 weeks the other 5 weeks. They were joyfully ‘feeder grower’s’. So I got my first baby home (it was a hotel cause that’s were the nicu was). I was through the roof exalted in happiness (had miscarriages). I was walking on clouds. Me and my loved little one went to the nicu everyday for my other little one. So, this one day when me and baby A are taking the hospital stairs, (dr told me don’t bring baby into an enclosed elevator as his immune is still weak) to the nicu, I’m carrying the baby in my arms. I pass 3 hospital workers going up. I am beaming ear to ear, smile at them all, this is the greatest time of my life! One of them reaches the top of the stairs, looks down and shouts ‘Stop’. She demanded to know who this baby was, I said we’re going to see his twin brother in the nicu. She then demands she and her two colleagues escort me there. OK. We get there, due to the secure nicu doors you have to pick up the phone on the outside wall connecting to the nurses desk. I dial in (as I been doing for 5 weeks) explain. Oh man those nicu nurse were heavy handed pissed, 5 came storming out. ‘Of course they know me, of course I didn’t steal a baby from their unit’. They went feral into these 3 hospital workers marching me downstairs suggesting THEY had a lapse in the nicu unit, ‘When did you take the tour to know your hospital’. I even asked if stairwell lady needed a glass of water, as I sat and watched all this. They thought because the baby in the stairwell wasn’t in a baby carrier I was suspicious based on carrying the baby in my arms, and possibly because I was smiling too much! True story, and no one ever had my back like those nicu nurses. Working that unit really is a testament to heart strings of humans. (This happened over a decade + ago - both boys just recently became taller than me). Thanks for reading.

I have been in the NICU for almost six months now. For context, I am in a new grad residency that is a year long and completed a 12-week orientation for a level 4 nicu. I have been off orientation, without a preceptor, for about 6 weeks now. Everyday I question if I am good enough to be a NICU nurse. I have extremely bad anxiety before and during my shifts. I feel like each hour I’m just surviving until the next. It’s truly such a huge learning curve. I know some of these feelings are normal and it will get better with time, but this particular issue is something I hope I can do something to make better.

I feel complete distrust from the parents I interact with. I am a put together, responsible, type A person. I’m 25 years old,  but I look very young. Most people think I am younger than 25, and I’ve dealt with people making comments like "you look like you're in high school" “are you even old enough to work here?” since starting my first medical job when I was 18. I feel like every parent can sense that I’m new and questions if I know what I am doing. I’ve even had some parents ask me if I’m a nursing student or if they can have a different nurse take care of their baby that “isn’t a new grad”. Meanwhile, the other new grad I work with has been praised by parents for being an amazing nurse. People have asked him if he’s done it for years and he’s even been told that it’s his calling. I don’t know how to better establish trust with my parents. Is this a normal experience for anyone else who started in the nicu as a new grad? Is there anything I can do better to help parents trust me more? I honestly feel like a big part of it is just that I look very young. It doesn’t matter how confident I seem or how well I answer questions, parents never seem to feel comfortable with me. And I get it, I would rather a nurse with 20+ years of experience take care of their baby rather than me. The whole situation is just further feeding into my self-doubt, anxiety, and me constantly questioning myself if I belong in the nicu and if I’m cut out to be a nicu nurse. 

website: https://www.informed.fyi/salaries/nurse

A few years ago, I did a survey across various forums and reddit asking whether people would be interested in a healthcare-focused salary website. The overwhelming response was yes.

After two years of working on it alongside a full-time job (and getting married somewhere in the middle!), I'm excited to finally share it. The project started as a way to improve salary transparency for my wife, who's a pharmacist. As I worked on it, I realized that the lack of salary transparency extends far beyond pharmacy and affects many healthcare professions.

It's definitely still a work in progress, and I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback or suggestions for improvement. If you'd like to contribute, salary submissions are completely anonymous, your personally identifying information such as your name and email are never displayed.

Hi, so this is going to sound ridiculous.... Im having a rough time with perinatal OCD and I havent been able to get a straight answer from anyone about this. For starters, I dont drink, I dont do drugs and I dont smoke. I am perscribed psych meds for adhd, anxiety and ocd. My obgyn and psychiatrist both approved my medications 5mg adderall, 40mg prozac and 5mg buspar as needed. I went off the aderall though at 29 weeks because I wanted to prevent withdrawal and be med free the remainder of pregnancy. Around then is when the ocd spiral started because I came across an article where a mother got her baby taken away by cps due to popping positive for opiates on drug test from everything bagels. I ate those all throughout my second trimester and part of my 3rd as they were kind of the only thing I could stomach. Sometimes I ate them a couple times a day. I doubt my urine would test positive in labor but I keep thinking if they for whatever reason maybe because I take psych meds or maybe something goes wrong and they test umbillical chord and meconium, would the everything bagels cause a false positive in the meconium or umbillical chord?