Childbearing, Family, and Womens Health Nursing is a course which focuses

on the family unit as a whole discussing many different aspects which affect
womens health from adolescent to old age and the
birth process. It specifically concentrated on
health promotion and illness prevention, acute and
chronic health care needs for patients during
the reproductive expanding phase of the
family life cycle. The application of Nursing
careplans which we previously worked on in
Professional Nursing became again relevant
specific to the childbearing family and a
womans return to previous health state while
utilizing teaching concepts that meet the
educational needs of the women and the family
as a whole. The birth process was studied in depth
including the development of the child in the
uterus as a fetus through pregnancy and birth. This course was somewhat
challenging for me as a male as their seemed to be a base knowledge deficit
from myself to my female counterparts in the course. This became especially
apparent when considering care for two patients, both the mother and the
baby, and their wildly different needs (while often also overlapping in many
ways).

In my clinical experience, I was able to spend multiple days in the

newborn nursery witnessing circumcisions and learning how to
perform a newborn head-to-toe. I also got to witness two vaginal
deliveries during my time in this clinical experience, which was a
particularly mind-blowing experience. Lastly, one of my favorite
portions of the clinical, was when we were shadowing the breast-
feeding nurse. By the end of the semester I felt I had developed
quite a knack for breast-feeding and felt competent in my abilities
to aid families with their struggles in this area individually. I aided
multiple families on my last day of clinical prior to the breast-
feeding nurse being on the unit, and they later approached me to
inform me that the families were doing exceptionally well.