sleepless nights

I am slowly making the transition into the night shift. Its been good I think. The night shift and the day shift are seriously as different as night and day. Day shift was just so chaotic.. in a controlled sense but there was ALWAYS something going on and everyone always had a patient or 2. For those who don't completely understand nursing... one patient in labor and delivery is a full load and 2 is just insane!!! On med/surg floors most nurses have anywhere from 4 to 7 or so patients which is also a lot but L&D is different. We are basically and ICU for pregnant women. Regular ICU nurses only have 1 maybe 2 patients too b/c the acuity of the patients requires so much more attention and anything can change in the blink of an eye... Like L&D. Everyone on the night shift has just been amazing. They all have been telling me stories that are awesome and others scare the crap out of me, then they tell me not to quit and to give it at least 1 year to BEGIN to feel comfortable. AHHHHHH 1 YEAR!!! seems like forever. (insert prayer here!)
I have been privileged to so far to have excellent mentors to follow and also, interesting cases. I've had the crazy pts who I really don't know how they managed to get pregnant (very uneducated to put it nicely.. follow??) , then there are just the crazy patients who always have crazy family members ready to fight with anything, those who have 100 million questions that always get repeated over and over again, ages 12- 45, the non English speaking in which my charades gets fine tuned, the 450lbs plus, pretty much you name it, I've had it. The other night my preceptor helped me delivery my first baby (meaning the doctor didn't make it in time so "delivery by RN") that was exciting. anyway, I have so many stories I wish I could share but b/c of privacy issues, I cant. Overall, its a pretty exciting job that is still very overwhelming to say the least. My whole biological rhythm is off and I'm trying to get into a cycle but its hard. staying awake all night then trying to sleep all day an still be awake enough to play with Ryder. I constantly feel like I'm in a daze which isn't so fun, but... God is good and I have a great job.