It has to be the oddest competition, or the least likely coincidence imaginable.
On Aug. 19, a story was published about 16 Intensive Care Unit nurses at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, Arizona, getting pregnant at the same, with all expecting to deliver between September and February.
Not to be outdone, Virginia’s Lynchburg General Hospital has announced that 19 of its emergency room nurses are expecting, Fox News reported. Those nurses expect the first births to come in a just a few days.
At first the announcements that one of the nurses had a baby on the way were greeted with typical congratulations. Eventually, the nurses’ attitudes changed.
Now when a new pregnancy was announced, nurse Harrison said, “We’re like, ‘Another one?’”
ER nurse Jessica Price said the rash of pregnancies was actually good for morale. “We can all lean on each other and ask questions,” she explained. “So if one’s having a problem or one is having some kind of symptom, we are able to kind of fall on each other.”
‘Something in the Water’
People were surprised that so many pregnancies started in so short a time span in such a limited area.
At both hospitals people have been asking how it happened.
“Something in the water” seems to be the common trope.
ICU nurse Ashley Atkins from Mesa Banner center said, “They’re wondering what’s in the water.”
Lynchburg ER nurse Gabby Harrison said the same thing about that hospital’s explosion of expanding bellies, “We all joke that there’s definitely something in the water,” she told Fox News.
ER nurse Jessica Price backs her up. “It’s definitely the water.”
No Staffing Concerns
The arrival of so many babies is a wonderful thing for their families, but it presents certain difficulties for their employers.
The upside is that pregnancy doesn’t happen overnight—the two hospitals have had months to prepare for the nurses’ maternity leaves.
Banner Desert ICU Nursing Director Heather Francis said substitute nursing staff has already been scheduled to fill in the inevitable gaps. “We’ve been planning for this for months,” she stated.
Lynchburg General also doesn’t expect any staffing issues. With a cadre of 120 nurses on staff, keeping the emergency room properly equipped shouldn’t be a problem.
