New Job!

I've been trying to find time to post about this career change in my life but have never had much time this summer to do so. I am now a Postpartum nurse! Don't get me wrong, I too, as most mothers out there, would love to stay at home and not work at all, but in the world we live in today a lot of mothers have to work and right now I fall into that category. My goal was to always use my nursing degree leisurely and just work the minimum needed to keep my license while raising our kids and than someday after all my kiddos are out of the house work full time and focus more on nursing.  I know if Jackson and I stay faithful and work hard as a team along with our Father in Heaven that one day soon I may be able to be a stay-at-home Mom.

So with that being said, it has always been my dream to be a nurse and to work with moms and babies. I used to tell everyone when I was a little girl, "I'm going to be a doctor that delivers babies!" After realizing how hard school was for me and how hard it would be to become an actual doctor, I looked into another possibility ... become a nurse. I did indeed have many people who doubted my ability to do so or wondered if I could really complete this goal or dream of mine to be a nurse, but I never gave up on it no matter how hard school was for me. As many of you know, I have done it! I graduated from the College of Southern Idaho and am a Registered Nurse!

Immediately after graduating I applied everywhere for a nursing job! I of course applied for all the Labor and Delivery or Postpartum OB/GYN jobs I could find but I also applied for med surg jobs and any other nursing jobs in a hospital. And when I say everywhere I mean, "everywhere"... California, Texas, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Florida, North Dakota etc. But in the end "everywhere" I applied required me to have some type of experience in that field. I was devastated, crushed, and wondered how I would ever get this dream of mine to work with babies. While I was in school and doing my practicums, I especially grew to dislike working on the Med/Surg floor in the hospitals. It just was not my cup of tea. I hated seeing my patients in so much pain and then me, as the nurse, not being able to really do anything for these patients. I'm a nurse, not a doctor, I don't know what's wrong with these patients when they code or as some of us nurses say, "try and have breakfast with Jesus." I'm clueless and I hated not being able to make a difference as a nurse in that field of work. So luckily for me I was able to finally find a job and start my nursing career on the Transitional Care Center (TCC) Unit at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City. 

The TCC Unit is basically a rehabilitation floor in the hospital. Patients have no IV's and are transferred to this floor to have extra rehab such as walking and strength training after their knee/back surgeries. I really grew to like it, even love it.  My work load wasn't too terrible and I was able to find the time to sit and chit chat with my patients and get to know them. It was just my speed and what I liked. I love old people! They are truly so fun to be around!

Well then last November the TCC Unit I worked on was downsizing, going from a 24 patient bed unit to a 14 bed unit. The floor was WAY over staffed and needed to make cut backs on nurses. The hospital's goal was to not lay off anyone but rather transfer them to another floor in the hospital that they would maybe like to work on. I of course jumped all over that in hopes of getting a job in Labor and Delivery or Postpartum. But once again, there was no one hiring on those floors and even if they had an opening they were wanting experience. 

So continuing on my search for another floor to transfer to, I was told that the "Orthopedic Surgical floor" was hiring. I was really torn about this and had no desire to transfer to that floor at all. But after much thought and prayer in trying to figure out where I needed to go, I transferred to the orthopedic h5med/surge floor and worked full time graveyards. My Mother told me this would be a good transfer as it would give me the needed experience that would be required when a job did become available on the floor I really wanted to work on. She told me she truly felt this was an answer to many prayers even though it did not feel like it at the time.

The work was okay, just WAY too much! I didn't have that extra time I had on TCC to make a difference for these patients I cared for. I didn't have the time to sit and visit with the patients or get to know them. Plus these patients were higher risk patients. We took care of them right after surgery. It is most often within the first 24 hours after surgery when things can go wrong. I did not like that. I had patients who went critical and I once again, as the nurse, did not know what to do for them. Often I would end up having to call doctors in the middle of the night that weren't very happy to be woken up. Once again, not my cup of tea. 

Lucky for me I had a Braxton just 3 months after starting work on this floor! Yay! I was relieved and so happy to have a baby! I was thinking I'm done! I had no desire to go back to work there. I loved my co-nurses I worked with but just didn't like the work. So as the time came for me to get off my maternity leave and head back to work I would just cry. I dreaded the thought of going back. I enjoyed being home with my son and not having to work. I got use to the idea of not working and really liked it. I also didn't want to leave my baby. I felt it wasn't fair to him to have me gone. But Jackson and I knew that for the time being I needed to work. So Jackson, my Midwife, and my mom suggested that I maybe apply for a job on Postpartum where I have always wanted to work. They suggested that I send the director of that floor an e-mail. So instead of just e-mailing her, I got all dressed up, printed out a copy of my resume and went to the postpartum floor in person in hopes of meeting her and perhaps better ensuring my chances of a job. When I got there, she was on vacation. Another hope shot down. So I just stuck my resume under her door with a cover letter on it in hopes she would still consider me. 

Within a week of sliding my resume under the door, the director called me up and offered me a job! She of course said she wanted to meet with me and officially interview me but she liked what she had read about me and said to plan on working there! I was SO excited and called up Jackson and my family to tell them the great news! Unfortunately because of company policy the hospital wanted me to finish out my 6 months on Orthopedics before transferring. Thank goodness my maternity leave counted and took up 2 1/2 months of the required six months. So I ended up only having to work for another 3-4 weeks on Orthopedics before transferring. I'm so grateful my new boss was willing to still hire me even after having to wait for me to finish up on Orthopedics. 

So I started Postpartum around June 13th of this year. It's been several weeks now since I started working on this floor but I love it! Don't get me wrong, I would truly love the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom and focusing only on my son and housework. Hopefully someday my time will come when I can just work one day a week or even every other week but given our family circumstance at this time I do need to work and I am grateful that I am able to work graveyards so that Braxton is mostly sleeping during the time I am away from him.  I know Braxton also loves his own special "Daddy Time" he gets with Jackson on the evenings I have to work.  

I am so grateful and happy to finally be working on a floor that I've always wanted to work on! My dreams have come true and what better floor to work on then Postpartum?! If I can't be home to take care of my own baby, I at least get to help take care of other babies! I love the fact that I know answers and can help these new moms. So many mothers ask me about babies, breast-feeding, diapers, times to feed babies, what methods work, etc. and I love that! I get to use my own experience to help these new moms out! Just the other night I had a new mother say to me, "Thank you Rachel, you really brought me back hope about breast-feeding!" I had faithfully worked with this new mother/baby all night to help ensure she could breast-feed as she desired to. 

I'm sure I could go on and on about all of my great experiences on this floor but in the end, just wanted to tell people now that I finally achieved my dream of working with moms and babies! I also want anyone else to know that may read this post, that anything is possible. If you want it, go for it! Don't give up and let others tell you it can't be done!

“Work is the miracle by which talent is brought to the surface and dreams become reality.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley

A weekend in July

Jaime Stubbs, (now Plott :P) had a bridal shower here in South Jordan, Utah so all the Plott girls, except for Sara, made it to Jaime's shower. After the shower we did a little celebration at the park to celebrate Dawson's birthday. I didn't get any pictures of the Bridal shower because I didn't think to do so, sorry Jaime, but I did get some pictures of us all hanging out at the park.

Braxton and Grandpa Plott hanging out at the house before going to the shower and the park.

Working on the cupcakes for the birthday, Grandma Plott did the hair on the "Despicable Me" minions and I did everything else. Glad she helped with the hair, I wouldn't have gotten them done in time.

I thought they turned out pretty good for the most part.

Hanging out at the park.

Happy Birthday Dawson! Glad Jackson, Braxton, and I were able to celebrate your birthday with you! And congratz Jaime! I'm so glad I was able to attend your bridal shower!

Just some random pictures of Braxton that I don't want to put in it's own blog post.
Just can't get enough of his constant smile!

My Car Accident

At about 3:20 PM on Sunday August 4th, 2013 I fell asleep on I 85 heading back to West Jordan from Eagle Mountain with Braxton. I worked the graveyard shift the last 4 nights at the hospital and didn't have much sleep the day before or the day of the accident. It's hard to call it a car accident because I've had such a clean record but I've finally came to terms in calling it that now. Even when I told Jackson the first time I talked to him on the phone, I said, "I hit a pole."

So I fell asleep and woke up to our car hitting the gravel, by than it was too late to stop myself from hitting the pole that was directly in front of me. I split the pole in two and went right over it, as you can tell by the tire marks. As you look at all the other pictures the tire marks help tell what happened.

Continuing onward past the pole I hit, you can see the next pole coming up. As well as the tire marks. I'm lucky I didn't flip.

I turned around and took a picture of the pole I hit.

Moving onward, seeing the 2nd pole I almost hit straight ahead of us. Tire marks.

More tire marks, you can see I barely missed that pole.

At least at the time I thought I missed it. Obviously I didn't miss it enough, as you can see on the pole, the red stuff is the remains of my left side tail light. I think I scraped the back left side of my car too.

This is a picture standing right next to the second pole, if you look closely, you can see the pole I hit on the left and the remains of it on the right. It's a pretty far distance.

If you couldn't see it, I circled it. The left circle is kind of big, so its the little dot close to the top of the inner circle.

Moving on past the pole, I swerved back into the road.

And went clear to the right side.

When I got to the right side of the road I over corrected and started spinning counter clockwise. Thank goodness it's a low riding Honda or I probably would have flipped.

When my car stopped spinning I was facing any oncoming cars that were behind me. As I said before, luckily there were no cars be hind me or close by. (Jackson later counted 175 walking steps from where we think the car stopped to where I hit the pole). My car shut off on it's own. Luckily I was able to turn the car back on and turn it around to face the right direction on the highway off to the right side of the road. I sat there parked because I was in shock and had adrenaline pumping. As I'm parked there I wanted to see the pole I hit, so I put the car in reverse and started to back up slowly. As I'm backing up I could see that the car was leaking fluid, as you can see in the picture below the trail of fluid. At this time, Jackson called me in about a minute after I hit the pole just to tell me he's off work.

As I'm reversing, back to where I hit the pole, I keep seeing more fluid, so I knew that the pole popped something in my car. My first instinct was that it was gas. So I shut the car off and got Braxton out of the car incase the car was to explode.

So here I am standing on the sidewalk in the 90+ degree weather in tears waiting for Jackson to come. I felt worse for Braxton because it was so hot. He of course had a smile on his face and was luckily asleep when we hit the pole. He seemed just fine and never cried. My happy amazing baby!

Than I looked at the front of the car and was literally shocked at the damage. I had no idea the pole would damage the hood of the front of my car. I thought for sure the bumper but not the hood.

You can kind of see the filter in there dented upwards.

Looking at the engine, honestly nothing looked damage, but we'll soon here what all needs to be fixed. Because I'm sure the remains of the pole scraped up the bottom.

And we can't forget the second pole damaging the left tail end of the car. In this picture, you can already tell that the light cover is broken off.

Overall, Braxton and I were lucky. I was in a skirt because I was coming back from a baby blessing and so a husband, wife, and family friend to the husband and wife saw me and pulled over to ask if I needed help. I of course said I was fine but certainly didn't look fine. They all got out of there car to help out. The guy came and smelt the fluid leaking from the car and said it was radiator fluid. Me having no car knowledge at all asked him if I could still drive it back since it's not the gas tank. He said, "Not unless you want to damage the engine". So he opened the hood and said the rest of it looked good from what he could see. They than asked me if I needed a ride home, I was pretty reluctant for awhile and said no but they wouldn't leave and kept saying I shouldn't stay out in the heat with the baby. Which by than I knew they were right. I felt horrible for Braxton, but he of course was just hanging out in his car seat just smiling at our new friends we found. I went ahead and decided to take them up on the ride and got a ride back to our house. I called Jackson and told him just to head to the house until I got there and that we'll come back and look at the car later together.

When I got home, I was pretty shaken up and sat on the stairs for awhile. Jackson hugged me and wanted me to go lay down but I couldn't because of the shock of it plus we needed to do something about the car. Jackson than grabbed Braxton who still was happy as can be, who started laughing at the dogs even, and fed him. So we're thinking nothing is wrong with Braxton. After we fed him we called the bishops wife, who was also our realitor for the house we bought, asking her if she was busy and if she could watch Braxton for a little bit while Jackson and I go back to the car to take pictures and call the insurance and figure things out. She of course was super sweet and watched him for us.

When we got back to the car, there was already a note on the car telling me the car was parked illegally and that I needed to call Officer Simon. So when I did, he said I'm never to leave the seen of an accident and I never thought of it as an accident at the time as to why I didn't think to call the cops in the first place, plus I told him I had my 5 month old in the car and didn't want to keep him in the heat. He was really nice about it and came back to where my car was parked after I called him. I told him I was an RN and worked a graveyard shift at St. Marks the night before, than taught primary at my ward, and then went to a baby blessing. Luckily, Officer Simon knew St. Marks hospital and started to ask me if I knew some of the security officers there at the hospital. I said to him, "No, but I'll be sure to tell them that you caught me". Which made him laugh and I think helped the situation a bit since he did say at the end of our conversation, "I'm letting you off the hook this time, but do call the next time you get in an accident. We would of put your baby in our air conditioned car." I told him I would. The officer was really nice to us, I was really lucky to have a nice police officer that found my car after I left it. By this time, the people that were towing the car has arrived and we left.

When Jackson and I bought the car we decided on making it have full coverage insurance since it's our number one vehicle. Lucky for us to have full coverage on it, the insurance company said that we just need to pay the auto body shop a 250 dollar deductible and the auto body place will charge the rest of it to the insurance company. Towing and a rental car was also covered in our insurance plan. So I went and got our rental car earlier today since I do have to go to work this week.

I'm overall doing okay, my neck is a little sore along with my back, but I've always had a bad back so nothing new there. Braxton doesn't show any sign of injury, I had him buckled in the car the way he's suppose to be buckled. Jackson and I are just happy there were no other cars on the road at the time I hit the pole because it definitely could have been a lot worse. And as my friend nicely put it yesterday to me, "You need to stop trying to do everything." So I will do my best not to, I'm a people pleaser and like to make everyone happy. At least I always try to.

I also want to thank our family and friends who said a prayer for us yesterday that we would be okay and that everything will work out. Slowly but surely we are recovering and things are working out as far as figuring out what to do with the car etc. I especially want to thank my heavenly father for watching over Braxton and I yesterday while we were out on the road, it could have been a lot worse and I know he had a part in keeping us safe, because I have no doubt that the car should have flipped. The advice for the day, "Don't sleep and drive".