The Night Shift

Today I turned down a day shift position.  For real.  For those who have been around for the past couple years, I can imagine how shocking this sounds. It shocked me too.  I can remember my desperation last year of wanting to do anything to get off nights.  Heck, I thought I was willing to work in an office to make the switch.

In retrospect, I am so grateful that didn't happen.  I can't really picture myself in an office dealing with geriatrics.  Just not my thing.  I like babies, and emergencies, and life changing moments, thank you very much.

So when my manager asked me this morning if I wanted to switch to days, the "no" came out of my mouth really fast for a couple reasons.  With starting a family, this works so much better for child care.  I would love to eventually go down to part time, and I stand a much better chance of doing that while keeping my night shift differential.  The day shift position would also be a pay cut because it would have been in labor and delivery only, instead of all the maternal/child units.  I'm kinda a sucker for money, especially now that we have sunk ourselves into this whole home ownership bit.

After saying no, I realized something else.  I like nights, well 12 hour nights.  I continue to abhor 8 hour nights and would not go back to that unless I was part time.  Three nights a week is plenty for me.  Insert gasp here and an ode to Tena from the last  hospital I worked at.  I get it now.

I love the girls on nights.  Honestly, I go to work for my social life. I work while I am there, but if you can't have a good conversation to stay awake, those nights would be brutal.  I love that it is quiet and dark, except when we are laughing too loud because of the absurd stories we can tell. I love that it is a supportive group of people because in an emergency, you need each other because there aren't many other resources you can call. It is just a different feel and a different mentality, and for right now it works for me and it works for my family, so I was able to make a choice that I could have never foreseen a year ago, and I'm OK with it.  I'm no longer hanging out at the edge of the cliff. Will I be tired and want to sleep more than I am able to?  You bet.  But isn't that the deal with a new baby anyways?  Might as well make some extra money and have some fun while I'm walking around like a zombie.

What a mental shift, I feel like a whole new person.  I guess this is just part of a growing up process, but I like not hanging out at the edge of the cliff and I'm sure everyone around me agrees.  Because no post is complete without a picture, here is a family trek to Dairy Queen on one of the oddly warm days last March.  I'm glad Erica is here to join us on some of our treks now.

Can you guess this drawing?  My husband and I had a high quality "draw something" game going. 

Happy Wednesday.  I'm going to go continue painting my windows and trim.  Loads of fun.