One baby, two babies, now a total of 12 babies are expected to be born at a hospital in San Diego, all belonging to nurses who work there.
Quite fittingly, the 12 soon-to-be moms work at the Labor and Delivery Unit at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns. Their due dates are just months apart from each other, spanning from next month to October.
“We love babies so, when we don’t see enough babies on our floor, we make our own and we give each other business,” said Martyna Feather, who is due next month.
The nurses keep track of the babies by maintaining a board with names of the nurses who are expecting. Little by little, that list began hitting a growth spurt and, soon, a second page had to be added.
“It was one name, then two names, then every week there was a name added,” said nurse Maricel Sadiarin, who is due in July.
When the nurses realized so many of them were pregnant, they wrote to "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" to share their story. They were gifted with 12 tickets to Ellen’s Mother’s Day Show.
For the group, it'll be a nice little getaway before those sleepless newborn nights begin at home.
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“It’s the 12 of us going and we're excited to carpool up to the show and see what we get and just have a fun day together,” said Joelle Price, who is also due next month.
Price is due on May 20, and hopes she can make it to the taping of the show with her fellow pregnant nurses. But she said she's prepared for anything.
“They have paramedics on site just in case there is an emergency, plus we are all labor and delivery nurses so we can deliver each other's babies if we needed to,” she added.
Last month, news of a baby boom among nurses at a hospital in Portland, Maine, also made headlines. At the Maine Medical Center, nine labor and delivery nurses are pregnant, with due dates between this month and July.
Sharp Mary Birch Hospital welcomes nearly 9,000 babies annually.