Hello all. This is Camille
I hope the first few weeks of your classes have been treating you well.
I want to share with you about my first few weeks of school.
I started my clinical with OB (mother and baby). I felt ambivalent. I was excited about the opportunity for me to learn how to care for mom and infant/fetus during antepartum, labor delivery and postpartum period but I also have anxiety and fear about my incompetency to deal with such little and fragile babies who are precious to mom and family. I have doubt about myself. What if I accidentally hurt the baby as I have no experience at all handling babies. I didn't even know how to properly hold a baby.
Fortunately, I was assigned to an awesome and encouraging clinical instructor who helped get us oriented to the units, and she demonstrated a full infant assessment with one of my fellow students. In addition, she suggested a few strategies to calm a fussy baby. I was still nervous after all of the lessons so I seeked help from her and hoped that she would be able to supervise me while I performed the assessment. However, she said this to me: "You can do this! You know more than you think you do. You just need to be confident." Well, actually, that didn't really help me at the moment. I was still nervous and frightened. I remember one of the TED Talks that I watched a while ago suggesting "fake it until you make it." So yes, I faked the confidence and went into the room to receive the baby from mom, and did an assessment on her.
Did I know what I was doing? Yes! Like my clinical instructor said, I have the knowledge.
Was I nervous the whole time I was handling the baby? Yes! I could sense the mom staring at me the whole time.
We are halfway done with the OB clinical. I am feeling more comfortable and confident for my assessment on baby and mother. For the most part, I don't feel anxious or nervous anymore, and I am truly confident providing care to mother and baby.
Sometimes, you just need to take the first step out of your comfort zone and swing it.
At the end, I want to share a video with you of me holding my baby sister for the first time.
FYI, the boy-looking kid was me. My family asked me about my sister's name and her zodiac (they forced me to say it in English)
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