My Ministry

It's sort of ironic that I just posted about this yesterday but today at Kelly's Korner she is posting about different ministries. My post is going to be a little different because mine is my actual "day job" so to speak. What I mean is that I get paid to do my ministry. I really feel called to do my occupation. As I stated yesterday, some of what I do everyday is mundane and boring but the bulk of my job is working with women who have delivered babies or infants in the neonatal intensive care unit.

I am the social worker for women's services at a local hospital. Like I said yesterday I work with many different types of people but a lot of what I do deals with death and helping women and families cope with the loss of infants - miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death. I have lost a baby and I am not going to discuss that right now but I have. I know how it feels. It is painful. End of discussion.

I also help parents when they receive news that is hard to handle from the neonatologist in the NICU. I help put the medical language into human terms and talk about next steps. I see all of the infants that are admitted to the NICU and support the parents the entire time the infant is there and sometimes that is a long time....months.

I see all mothers that deliver babies at the hospital under the age of 18. I screen these moms to make sure that they have good support systems because they are children having children. I make sure they have supplies for the baby...especially car seats. I make sure there aren't any concerns about her ability to care for the infant. I see a lot of teenage mothers.....A LOT!

I work all of the adoption cases in our hospital. I do not arrange them but if a mom comes in and wants to place her baby for adoption, I have to make sure that there are arrangements either already in place or assist her with getting them in place. This is EXTREMELY time consuming and can be very emotional sometimes. Most of the time is has a happy ending but the process can be hard.

I also have to make CPS reports. I will not go into a great deal of detail here. Let's just say, it is not pleasant. People do not make wise decisions sometimes. I know that is shocking to EVERYONE reading this but...it's true!!!

So....like I said, I know that I posted about this two days in a row...even after I made a point to say that I don't normally post about work on here and I probably won't again for a long time but I forgot that Kelly was doing this today or I would have saved it until today. This is my ministry...also known as my occupation....I help women. Women and children. I am a social worker.