Hello world! Welcome to PerinatalPlanner.com. My name is Jasmine and I’ve been a perinatal nurse since 2016.
After graduating with my bachelor of science in nursing degree in 2015, I cut a deal with a perinatal unit: cross train to be a nurse for both mother baby and labor & delivery. This doesn’t usually happen. You’re either a mother baby nurse or you’re a L&D nurse.
”Peri” meaning around and “natal” meaning relating to birth. Together, the word perinatal describes the time periods before, during, and after someone gives birth.
As a side note, I never had plans on becoming a perinatal nurse. In fact, if you told my past nursing student self that I’d be working with babies, I would just laugh and say, “Shyeah right!” I had no intension of ever working with babies. I had dreams for a different nursing specialty, but now I can’t imagine not doing what I do.
The cross training program put me on the mother baby unit, also called postpartum or couplet care units in other hospitals. After a year I trained on labor & delivery. This is where I eventually stayed.
Perinatal planning is not just for pregnant people.
When I first became a perinatal nurse I soon learned it was not what I thought it was. Nursing school only taught me a fraction of what I know now. I also have little experience being a patient.
Nurses are taught to empathize with their patients, but how do you really do that if you’ve never been one at all? On the flip side, how do patients connect with their nurses, if they don’t really know what we do? This is a wall I want to chip away at.
I created this site for perinatal healthcare workers and patients. My hope is to become a resource for nurses, patients, and perhaps nursing students or other nurses looking to become perinatal nurses. There is a lot that healthcare workers can learn from patients, and it’s the same the other way around. I hope that you will find this website useful, as I plan to discuss topics centered around the perinatal experience.