I got my wife S to the hospital at about 4:30 am on Sunday in the throes of labor. After throwing up near the reception desk, she was triaged and found out she was fully dilated and couldn’t get an epidural. We were rushed to the nearest room and after a few minutes the baby was already crowning. They called the OB, but the head was out a couple of minutes later, and, due to shoulder dystocia, wasn’t progressing anymore. I was frantically trying to remember what they taught in medical school about how to handle shoulder dystocia since delivering babies is not a regular part of my ENT practice, but S needed 100% of my attention since she was having to push this baby out with no anesthesia (a baby who turned out to be nearly 10 pounds at 36.5 weeks). That’s when Niyia calmly used her hands to start maneuvering the baby’s shoulder. No one asked her to; she just stepped up. Seeing that S was fatiguing, two nurses instinctively got on top of S and was manually aiding her pushes. After at least 5 long minutes the baby was finally unstuck and fully delivered, right as the OB walked in the room, at 5 am. With how stressful the delivery was, our baby didn’t make any noise for another 5 long minutes, but finally started grunting and was thankfully doing fine.

This was one of my most vulnerable moments as a physician, seeing both my child and wife in distress and only being able to help one of them. Niyia told us she took a class 7 years ago that included how to handle shoulder dystocia, but hadn’t had to use this knowledge for at least 5 years. Without her, our baby may have been stuck for a very long time, and who knows what the outcome would have been. It wasn’t her responsibility to know how to handle that situation, but she prepared for it anyway and came through in the clutch. Nurses like these rock! They will always be our family’s heroes!