My wife and I delivered our first baby this weekend. Our amazing nurse was Rebecca Nave. My wife's labor was an amazing and hard experience. My wife was gestational diabetic, so we were scheduled for induction this past Saturday morning. However, since she was not completely effaced we had to come in Friday for Cervidil. Rebecca was our floor nurse who administered Cervidil to my wife and removed the application in the morning. Both experiences were painful, as my wife's cervix was not in alignment with the birth canal. We then received Pitocin a couple of hours after Rebecca had left, around 8 am. Although we had to receive Pitocin in order to not go past our due date, we wanted to have the most natural birth possible. This was important to us and we made it clear to all of the nurses and our doctor who worked with us throughout this experience. All staff respected our wishes and we felt everyone's full support.
Saturday did not go as planned. Rebecca works the night shift, and by the time she came in at 6 pm we had been on Pitocin for over 10 hours and had the doctor break my wife's water at 1 pm. The contractions were not in sync, we were not completely effaced and dilation was at 3cm. We both struggled to make the call at 1 pm to unnaturally break the water, but we felt like it was the right call with the little progress we were making. At 6 pm with little to no more progress, we were anxious. Rebecca was the Charge Nurse this night, but she made it a point to pop-in and say "hi" while our floor nurse was taking amazing care of us. Around 8 pm, the contractions had become so intense that my wife was strongly considering pain medication. We were only at 3 cm. We do not feel like anything is wrong with pain medication, but we wanted to birth as naturally as possible as that was important to us. Megan suggested for us to try the shower jets to see if it would alleviate the back pain my wife was experiencing. We used the jets for an hour and then rechecked dilation. We were still at 3cm. At this point, we decided to opt for an epidural. It was not our first choice, but after much prayer and pain, we decided that it was the best course for us. We had to finish some other fluids, so it took us a little over an hour to receive the epidural and then for it to take effect. Once it took effect, my wife fell asleep around 10:45 pm in anticipation of needing plenty of energy in the morning for delivery.
At 12:50 am, I was awoken by Megan and my wife yelling at me to grab her other foot at the end of the bed. It took me several moments to fully wake up and realize what was going on. Megan informed me that my wife was now 10cm. We did a couple of practice pushes and then notified the doctor. But things did not go as smoothly as planned. In all, my wife labored until 6:18 am for the birth of our beautiful girl. I cannot express how much we already love this child - I could write a million more letters about her! But, this letter is about our nurse Rebecca Nave.
Rebecca joined our labor process about an hour into our start. For the next 4 hours, she championed my wife on with 6 different laboring positions, implementing different techniques to get the baby in line with the birth canal, and reminding her to breathe while stressing the importance to rest in-between contractions. Most importantly, she never doubted that we were going to have a vaginal birth. This is the heart of why I believe that Rebecca is a DAISY Nurse. It would have been easy to call for a Cesarean in our case - my wife had been laboring for nearly 5 hours, her contractions never increased to more than 5 minutes apart, and we were completely exhausted from laboring naturally the day before and getting less than two hours of sleep. Instead of following the norm, Rebecca ensured that baby and momma were not in distress and pushed us forward with an unstoppable determination that we were going to push this baby out. She made it a personal mission to ensure that my wife delivered our baby. I will never forget how she pushed my mother-in-law out of the way when the baby's head emerged but my wife was too exhausted to push out the shoulders. Rebecca literally jumped on the bed and helped my wife deliver the rest of our baby by pushing down on her stomach. I am a manager for a fortune 400 company. I have nearly a dozen direct reports, and I know the difference between my reports who "do their job" and those who make it part of their legacy and exceed expectations. This is exactly what Rebecca did. Rebecca did not see just another bed with a laboring mom, she saw us and how much it meant to us to deliver our baby in the most natural way possible.
I write this with tears in my eyes because I cannot imagine how defeating it would have felt to go through Cervidil for 12 hours, un-medicated Pitocin contractions for over 13 hours, pushed for nearly 5 hours to then get a Cesarean. Rebecca had the wisdom to see that my wife was not trying to hold onto a failed dream, but that she still had the strength, energy, and determination to have a vaginal birth. When the doctor entered our room at 5:15 am, Rebecca turned to him and told him that we would be having this baby by 6 am. Then, she turned back to my wife and said, "Baby's okay and you're okay. You are strong and you will do this. We are having this baby." Just before the final pushes we still could not get the baby in line with the birth canal. Rebecca took charge by getting my wife on the birthing peanut and tilting the bed 15 degrees so that gravity could possibly help baby re-align. She then had everyone, except for select staff and family, leave the room and turned out the lights for 20 minutes. My wife and I played worship music and I got on my knees to pray over her. When the team re-entered, we took another moment to pray over my wife and Rebecca joined in. Rebecca is not a DAISY Nurse for helping deliver a baby, she is one for pushing alongside my wife, for not allowing our best-laid plans to completely crumble and for showing our world the very best service that a nurse could ever offer: to "elevate the standard of my profession," in the words of Florence Nightingale.