Our son was born through a C-Section and from delivery he had issues latching onto the breast and while I realized this can be very normal this issue continued throughout the weekend. All the nurses were very nice but as the weekend progressed my panic did as well and Jen Simon was the only nurse who truly empathized with my worries. After 5 minutes of talking with me over my frustration with nursing my baby she came in and tried every nursing technique she could think of to get our son to latch on (at this point he had a day and a half without a good feed which everyone else was attributing to his circumcision and fluids inhaled at birth). When this was unsuccessful I asked for a pump and she helped me track one down late in the evening. After pumping I was able to get him to feed a little but still not very much and assumed he just needed time to build up his strength.
By night 3 I had reached my desperation point because he just seemed to be getting progressively weaker (still everyone kept blaming this on the circumcision) and when Jen came in at 7 she sat down with our family to see what she could do to help us through this. I had just pumped and was extremely overwhelmed by my failed attempts to breastfeed and my lack of sleep. Jen knew exactly what we needed and said she would take the milk I had pumped and see what she could do to get him to feed. She later came in and told us that he was down a full pound and asked if we were ok with her keeping him a little longer to try to get some more of my breast milk in him. After a couple hours she came into our room and announced that after spending time attempting to get him to feed and assessing the strength of his latch she discovered a cleft palate. She was the first person to discover this on our son and upon her discovery she immediately called the pediatrician, got us set up with the specialists at Children's and called the lactation consultants to sit down and discuss feeding options.
My husband and I feel Jen saved our son's life because lord knows where we would be at this point without her discovery. We are now at home and he has already gained 4-5 ounces pretty much over 24 hours and our pediatrician was thrilled with his weight gain. I can also tell you that I only had to page her maybe once or twice the entire time she was covering our family as she was usually one step ahead of me.
Jen was the best nurse I have ever experienced (and this includes my daughter's delivery back in 2011). She made our stay at Akron General a truly positive experience.