Lauren Wenger is a perinatal nurse at UCI Medical Center in Orange, California, providing maternity care to some of the most high-risk patients in the county. Her training and expertise encompass antenatal, labor and delivery and postpartum nursing, including the care of well newborns. She graduated from the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in nursing science, and has worked at the hospital for two years. She is the youngest nurse on the unit.
I make breakfast while my coffee is brewing. On workdays my go-to breakfast is avocado on toast. It’s got everything you need—complex carbs, healthy fats and protein, because I make it with an egg on top. I go back upstairs to change into my scrubs and do some stretches. I try to do some meditation before I go into the wildness that is the hospital.
My contract says three 12-hour shifts a week but we’ve been short lately, so I often work four. That’s my maximum. At some point, you have to live your life.
I start my drive to work at 6:00 a.m. I like to get there a little early. I change from my regular old scrubs into surgical scrubs, because you don’t want to go home at the end of the day with amniotic fluid on you.
At 6:53 I’ll clock in, go to the front nursing station and look at my assignment. I was cross-trained—antenatal, labor and delivery, postpartum—and I signed up to stay perinatal so I keep those skills. But we’re most short-staffed on labor.
Babies come when they want to come. It’s off-putting when there’s nothing going on in the unit: I’m suspicious of it. I walked into a quiet unit last week and there was an overhead announcement: “OB emergency, delivery room 2.” That means that other units come to help from across the medical center. I think that was a uterine rupture.
7:00 a.m., I huddle with the nurses that are on that day. The charge nurse gives us a summary of the unit: how many patients are in labor, that kind of thing. Then I’ll go and find the nurse who had my patient or patients the prior shift.
I might get two patients who are in early labor. A lot of our patients have high-risk pregnancies and may be on pitocin drips to induce or amplify labor because the baby needs to come out. I’ll sign off on their medications and introduce myself. If they’ve been coming to us for their clinic appointments, there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll have seen them before in triage.
There are patients that don’t have any prenatal care. There are patients who have been living in shelters. We take them all, no questions asked, and we do our best to care for them with the perspective of maternal and fetal wellbeing. That’s another cool thing about working with UCI. We help in any way we can, putting in social work consults while they’re with us, education if they want it, making calls for them.
I’ll do anything I can to give my laboring patients their autonomy. I know that when I’m vulnerable, knowledge makes me feel better, so I try to give them the knowledge they need to feel secure. I show them how to read the fetal heart rate monitor that the doctors and nurses are using as the basis for their care. I’ll go over how they can move around, help them try positions. I tell them: “You’re the center of the healthcare team. The only time we’ll intervene is if it’s life-saving.”
We can only legally have two laboring patients at a time. Once your patient is dilated 9.5 to 10 cm, you tell your charge nurse and you give your other patient to another nurse who can take them. When you’re pushing with the patient, you’re one-to-one.
Honestly, I try to bring my A-game every day. But it’s when things don’t go well that it might make more of an impact in the patient’s life if you’re a better nurse. When you have a loss, you want to be there to listen and provide silence. You want to be very careful about what you say even if it comes from a loving place. It’s hard. I feel every loss.
Recently I was with a mom pushing for hours and I was thinking, this baby’s not going to come out. It was in occipital posterior position—facing the wrong way. I told the doctor and he gave me and the patient 30 minutes to rest. Then once we had everyone in the room who needed to be there, he got the forceps and just turned this kiddo. Within one push we had a kid. That was one where I cried. I was just so happy! Holy cow! It took so much, and she did it.
I usually am exhausted by the end of my shift. UCI’s fabulous: you get one 45-minute break that is paid and one 30-minute break that’s unpaid. But August was really rough so oftentimes in the summer I didn’t get one break. Everyone gets pregnant around turkey day. Do the math.
I get home around 8:15 p.m. and I’m too tired to have a proper dinner. I just have cottage cheese and fruit and a sweet treat too, because I deserve it after a long day.
I live with my mom because I’m saving up to buy somewhere. Also, because I love my mom! If she’s there, we’ll chat for a little bit. If I’m working the next day, I’m going straight to bed.
I enjoy what I do. I love the moms. And I love the babies. I wanted to be a nurse from freshman year in high school. We had some sickness in the family, so I was in hospitals a lot, and the nurses were just the best.
