It’s been a crazy year on the obstetrics floor at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery in East Norriton, Pa. — not for patients, but for medical staff.
In 2019, 14 labor and delivery, mother-baby and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurses and physicians gave birth. Some moms were first-timers. Others welcomed child number two, three, or four. An obstetrician/gynecologist had triplets. Two nurses gave birth elsewhere, and three more nurses are expecting any day now.
It’s not just a baby boom. It’s a baby Einstein boom.
Recently, many of these moms — several nurses and one osteopath — gathered at the East Norriton hospital’s shiny campus for a play date with their babies.
The scrub-wearing mothers seemed so at ease and in the zone while swapping stories and soothing babies that a visitor just had to ask: When your job is to care for new moms and newborns, does giving birth yourself feel like just another day at work? And did you purposely time your pregnancies to coincide?
No and no, they insisted. Having and raising a child is hard, even for a pro. And they simply happened to grow their families all at the same time.
Being new moms has made the Einstein nurses better patient caregivers, said April Wine, a mother-baby nurse: “The word that comes to mind is ‘supportive.’ “