If you’ve given birth in a hospital you know one thing to be true of doctors and nurses during labor - the nurses are the unsung heroes! A good nurse or a bad nurse can completely change a woman’s scenario. Doctors are like the rock stars, the headlining act that only shows up for the last half of the show but the nurses are there through out, assisting you, making you feel as comfortable as possible and in the end if they had to deliver a baby they totally could. They usually don’t get that glory, the doctor comes in, scoops up the newborn in a catcher’s mitt and rides off on the shoulders of the hospital staff while the nurse hangs back and shows new parents how to give a baby a bath, change it’s diapers, nurse and burp the baby, etc.

So this post is really just to salute these fabulous nurses (sorry crappy nurses but you get no accolades) that save the day to too little acclaim. During my own labor (the first time around anyway) I had this first nurse that came in and immediately rubbed me the wrong way. She said and did all the wrong things including: immediately offer me pitocin without even giving me the chance to dilate, keep me stuck in the horizontal position when all I wanted to do was walk around and have a rookie nervousness to her that just made me want to bite her freaking head off. To this day my husband maintains that she wasn’t that bad but I know what I went through in those moments and if an angry pregnant lady says, “She Sucks!” then that nurse sucks.

Lucky for me it was the end of her shift. As soon as Nurse Sucks left, nurse Terry came on, she was like a goddess sent from the heavens… ok the main thing was when I asked her in a pathetic pleading voice, “May I please stand and walk?” she gave me an emphatic, “Why of course!” that made me think instantly that she was the most brilliant nurse to ever grace the halls of any hospital anywhere. She understood my desire to have natural child birth and she told me that I was doing a perfect job of dilating (no pitocin needed damnit!). She told me that she had 20 children and she knew of a million different ways to birth a baby. Ok it was five kids and she did some of them naturally and some of them other ways.  

She told me to do my breathing exercises and I did and they helped. My poor husband told me to do them several times but I wouldn’t listen to him. I think I told him sit there, don’t touch me and don’t you dare go away! He was good at doing that part, he was good through it all actually, great even.

When my doctor’s colleague (but not my doctor) came in the room and offered me an epideral and I turned it down and I remember how he said, “OK but no one wins a prize for doing it naturally.” I looked at Nurse Terry and she shook her head and said, “You are doing great, you’re almost done and you can do this I know it!” which was just what I needed to hear. I wanted to hug her, I had so much resolve at that point. That stupid doctor just made me want to skip the drugs and throw them at him. Thankfully he did not deliver my daughter. My actual doctor, who was fantastic but even he is no Nurse Terry, showed up just in time. Just in time to pull the prize out of the Crackerjack box, Ta Da! A beautiful perfect baby!

Then Nurse Terry dutifully stayed back and showed us some basic care and maintenance of babies. We were the new, dumb-founded parents of a tiny human. It’s so unreal. A few hours earlier we were just two people but boom! Now we’re a family just like that. Thanks again Nurse Terry.