The Home Depot baby: a cautionary tale

A while back I was admitting a lady in preterm labor.  I noticed on her chart that we shared a birth month and year.  When I was asking her history it became apparent she had older kids, which is another thing she and I share.

Me:  "so how old is your first baby?"

Patient: "oh she's a worthless thing that's almost sixteen, thinks she owns the damn world." 

I laughed out loud and got the rest of her history.  

We have a section on our chart where we ask if the patient got pregnant as a result of fertility treatments.  When I asked her this she laughed out loud.  And she said:

"Honey, this is a Home Depot baby.  You know what that is?  It happens when you get divorced.  After a couple of years you start noticing the cute young boys at the Home Depot.  Some of them even offer to come over and help you fix things if you ask enough questions.  So you have this beautiful young man in your house... and you know what happens?  They don't even need more than a couple of minutes to get hard, and you don't even have time to think about wearing condoms.  So... Look what happens.  My old ass is having a Home Depot baby, and I'm in preterm labor because my old body isn't doing too good a job with it."

I told her I was in the middle of a divorce with older kids also.

She looked at me and said, "you'd better watch yourself, then!"

Look out, divorced ladies! Beware the Home Depot baby.

Updates... I am alive!

So, a lot has happened.  I transferred out of the ICU and now work in Labor and Delivery... a whole new kind of inappropriate.  ;)  I've been mostly loving it.  It's one of those areas of nursing where it sounds like all rainbows and fluffy bunnies and clouds, but often it's really people screaming at you, drug addiction, people bleeding to death, and untimely death in general.  Other times it's really truly beautiful and I feel like I am walking on air after a good delivery.  You never know what you will get when you walk in the door, and I say that even more so than the ICU, which is surprising.

I have a medical procedure coming up where I get to be someone's patient in a hospital.  This is terrifying for me.  I really don't do well with role reversal, and not being in control.  I live alone now so I am having friends come and see me after the procedure while I am in the hospital and I just KNOW I will fall asleep while on pain meds and fart really loudly, or wake up and start admitting really, really embarrassing things to people.  I have been told I will be pretty snowed.  If you're in town and free, send me an email and I can do embarrassing things to you, too!  Mostly, I am looking forward to having a couple of weeks off from work.  Things have gotten kind of crazy in my personal life lately, and I could use some time to reboot a few things.

When I have a short snippet, I usually post on facebook instead of here, at https://www.facebook.com/InappropriateAtBaseline - so feel free to like that page.

What else?

Oh, I am slowly making my way through midwifery school.  Yay!  It's sometimes awesome, sometimes horrible, and I am in a phase where right now it's often mundane because I am taking all the preliminary courses and not much that's related to midwifery yet.