Nomination 1: We were triaged into the hospital after laboring for two days at home. From the beginning, Clarissa was a calming presence who so clearly cared about my well-being as well as our baby. She was encouraging and compassionate, helping not just with caring for my basic needs but also standing in as a faux doula with back massages to relieve back labor, different positions to try to move the baby along, and supplementing the information we received from our medical team. My labor got very stressful after about a day, and Clarissa was able to help us process and understand some of the decisions we had to make, easing some of our concerns about deviating from our preferred birth. She was a source of comfort for both my husband and me and was able to be present in the OR for what ultimately ended up being an unscheduled c-section. After our boy was born, she cared for him for the first 2 hours, working past her shift end while I was sleeping and my husband was treating a sprained ankle. She was also able to meet our little boy and learn his final name a few nights later when she came back for her next shift. We felt so cared for both evenings with Clarissa and were incredibly grateful that she ended up being part of our team for the birth of our first baby.
Nomination 2: I came to labor and delivery very suddenly at 9 centimeters, so things were happening very quickly, and I was pretty scared, especially when things went wrong after birth. Clarissa was like an angel that stayed with me the whole night and got me through everything. She was an amazing calming presence during the birth, but especially when I had to go into the OR and was alone and scared because my partner was with the baby. I don’t know how I would have gotten through that day without her calm, caring, and professional presence.