Paediatrics...how do you do it?!

Well, to all those kids nurses out there, I salute you! I am not qute sure how you do it, well I wasn't until a bit of a breakthrough happened.
Because of the nature of what we do on the ship, a large part of my job is giving out pain meds and wound care. Have you ever tried playing and having fun with little ones who know you for the person who comes and makes them drink yukky medicine from a syringe, and pull and tug at things stuck to your skin? Not so easy I tell you!
I had a pretty hard going shift this week where I had to care for 5 kids who had had cleft lip/palette repairs. 4 times a day they have to have their lip and mouths swabbed with cleaning solution (wouldn't be nice for grown ups either, but at least you can explain!). So, I had had a pretty horrid day making grumpy in pain babies, initially even more grumpy by giving them medicine into sore mouths (for the eventual pain relief benefit of course!), then cleaning their mouths while they fought me off for dear life, and then wouldn't look at me for at least 20 minutes. It doesn't exactly make your heart warm and fluffy, what a bad nurse I am...
But then, one of the mammas was in desperate need of a snooze so insisted I 'carry her baby wit me' (fine by me!!). Earlier she had been pretty grumpy with me, having had a cleft lip repair, she had encountered my above described nursing duties. After a few grizzles, she snuggled in and was happily content for an hour and a half as we took a group patients up onto deck 7 for their 'outside' time off the ward. That made all the hours before pale into the background.
Later that shift I realised the same baby had a visitor. I noticed the man had a bolster in his nose and a suture line to his lip. It suddenly clicked to 2 of us, this chap was her Papa and he too had been with us a week previously and had had his cleft lip repaired too!! What an awesome story, daddy and daughter having their surgery virtually at the same time. It stills sends shivers up my spine when I think how special that situation is.