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Chief Medical Officer’s Personal Log, Stardate 2267.98. Once again it’s breeding season aboard the Enterprise. I’ve had a constant migraine for the past week because of these damn babies everywhere.
See, there were a number of pregnant officers on board when we shipped out - amazingly of all different species. Human, Andorian, Tellarite, Edosian, you name it. We were going to keep the officers and their families around for as long as we deemed it safe, but we expected those would be the first and last babies born on the ship. God were we wrong...
Last time this month came around we had the forethought to section off a room specifically for childcare. The room was complete with soundproofing and audiovisual computer monitoring so we didn’t have to listen to that infernal screaming all day. We even had a childcare professional on board to deal with the children so my nurses and I could focus on keeping up with our adult patients. Why we ever let Doctor Barrett leave the ship, I’ll never know.
But anyway - this time all we have is a designated corner of sickbay with a cluster of bassinets and enough baby supplies to last a lifetime. All of my doctors and nurses have been working around the clock taking care of the kids, but it’s not enough. Most of them don’t have much childcare experience either - they’re all trained to treat adults of almost any species, but that doesn’t say much about their abilities to keep babies calm. Besides, this was supposed to be a 5-year space-mapping exploration, not a repopulation mission!
All I’ve wanted this week is to do my work in peace. I tried earplugs a few days back but they weren’t able to completely cut out all the distractions - not to mention I wasn’t able to hear my adult patients asking for me. Sure the blinking light on my desk turned on when they pressed their call button, but sometimes I was too engrossed in my work to notice immediately. It often took me up to five minutes to notice I was being paged. Needless to say it only took an hour or two before I gave up on the earplugs and went back to listening to the screeching children.
I still don’t have a perfect solution to the noise problem, but I’ve been talking with Scotty about getting a real soundproof nursery room added to sickbay. I imagine this same thing will keep happening for the next three years we’re in space too, and I’d like to be more prepared next time. I’ll have to talk Jim into bringing in a few extra nurses specifically to take care of the children, plus he needs to set up a daycare center somewhere on the ship. With another litter like this the place will be swarming with kids. Not that I don’t like children, of course, I just don’t want them underfoot when there’s a crisis.
Honestly the only good thing I have going for me right now is that my “No Sex In Sickbay” posters have been doing their jobs rather effectively. I still walk in on PDA all the time, but I’ve gotten used to it. At least they’re not doing anything unseemly in a public place. Except maybe Jim and Spock’s handholding… I’m pretty sure doing that kind of thing in public is banned on Vulcan. I should ask M’Benga about it - I don’t think Spock would approve of my questions.
Oh no there goes the Andorian kid again. I need to go take care of this - all the on-duty nurses are busy with other patients. McCoy out.