Clarity

You all know me. You know what I want to be when I grow up.
You know I'm so, so close. So close that I lick at the heels of being a nurse every time I go to work.
And I love it.

But I've noticed there is something about it that is empty. Something about being and becoming a nurse that isn't quite good enough. Isn't living up to what I wanted it to be. And I figured it out. It isn't the nurses I work with that I envy the most.

It's the moms.

The moms that watch me come in with my measuring tools, my mask and my gloves, and I take their babies from their arms and start doing my business. I take their temperatures, measure the size of their tummies and their heads. I weigh them, change them, traumatize them for their own good by sucking all the RSV+ goobers out their little noses. I watch the data on the monitors and decide if their baby is doing well or not. I badger the sweet, tired mom's about how much the baby has eaten of breast milk or this formula or that, and what time did he finish that? I don't even let them change the diapers like a normal person, I have to weigh and analyze the contents of those as well, and give the yeah or nay on if it is right and good.

I impose so much on these moms, as if I know so much more about their baby than they do. And they trust me.

But after I've made the baby cold and agitated, I bundle them up as tight as I can and put them back in their mother's arms where they stop crying, because they feel safe again. And every once and a while, when the mother is out, I get the chance to be the arms that feel safe. And every time I remember that even if I never become a nurse, or even if I do and I work in pediatrics for the rest of my life, I will really only fulfill my dream when I'm a mom with my own babies who know who's arms are safe. Because that's really all I've ever wanted.