Treating Employees with Grace

A long time ago, when my oldest daughter was in kindergarten, she was in a play around Christmas time.  At that point I was working in a Newborn Nursery and I had asked my boss if it would be possible to go over to her school and watch her play and come back to work.  I was surprised with her  answer and it was NO.  I promised myself that day that if I was ever in a position to allow people to do important things with their families, I would do it.  A few years later, I was a Director myself and I have tried to stay true to this over the years.

I have been a nursing director at one facility or another for the last thirty years.  Although the locations change and faces of the employees that I have worked with change, the stories are the same.    I have found that everyone at some point in their life is going to need grace.  One thing I know is that you can think it is never going to be "your" family, it always rolls around and everyone gets a chance that they will need grace.  Stuff happens.  Your child may come home and tell you they volunteered you to make 25 cup cakes for their class and they need them in the morning, oh yeah, and you are working that evening at 7 PM.  It is never fun to get that phone call where your child who is in college in another city has been in a car accident, or your mother is very ill but life happens.  Treat your employees with grace.  Treat your co-workers with grace.   You never know when it is going to be your turn to need grace.

Labor Day

Labor Day.... a day in September..... but to Perinatal Nurses, every day is Labor Day.  I come from a very big family and when I was in the ninth grade my mother went into labor on Labor Day with my youngest sister.  I was supposed to go to a babysitting job that evening so Mom was grilling me some pork chops before I went.  I remember her calling to me and I went along hurrying to follow her into the house and saw so much blood..... I was very scared.  

This would be my mother's seventh child.  As I know now, she was a grand multiparous, elderly, advanced maternal age with a history of hemorrhage with every delivery.   The only thing that probably would have been worse for me at this point was if she had the baby at home!

My Dad was summoned after I helped clean my mother up.  I canceled my babysitting job because I would be babysitting my own brothers and sisters while dad took mom to the hospital.  Dad knew the drill and got my mother promptly to the hospital.

A few hours later, Dad returned and told us we had a new baby sister.  My parents had given up on naming babies and told us we could name her.  There was a show back then called My Favorite Martian.  My siblings and I loved that show and one of the characters had a girlfriend named Laura Lee so that is what we suggested they name the baby and they did!   Although in looking up the show for this picture, I found on Wikipedia that her name was spelled, Lorelei.  <so sorry Laura, we misspelled your name!>

Back then, dads did not stay at the hospital with the moms and the older siblings definitely did not get to go to the hospital to see the baby sisters and brothers.  So we stayed home and waited for our mother and baby sister to come home!  My mother did have to have blood transfusion after Laura was born.  But, Laura was perfect and Mom was soon back to normal.  

Every Labor Day, I think back to this story, pork chops, BBQ, being scared, and of course, My Favorite Martian! I also wonder if this was the exact moment I decided to be a Perinatal Nurse.