At least 17 nurses in the same unit at one Ohio hospital in the U.S. are all pregnant at the same time and expect their babies this year, breaking a previous record set by the staff at Dayton’s Miami Valley Hospital.
“It’s exciting,” Amberly Saner, a nurse manager at Miami Valley’s labor and delivery unit, told ABC News Monday, June 29. “We kind of found out over a period of a couple of months how many people were pregnant and it just kept growing and growing.”
Previously, the same unit made news headlines when 11 staffers were expecting babies at the same time, according to a Miami Valley news release.
Fifteen of the 17 pregnant nurses gathered to take a group photo at the hospital recently, all in their matching uniforms.
Several are expecting their first child while others are expecting their second kids or beyond.
Among them are nurses Maddie and Rileigh, who requested to only go by their first names out of privacy concerns.
Maddie told ABC News she is 26 weeks into her pregnancy and expecting her second child. Rileigh, who is also expecting her second child, is about 31 weeks along.
The two nurses have also both been working at Miami Valley for the past five years.
“Maddie and I are actually best friends. So I’m planning on having Maddie deliver my baby,” Rileigh said.
Even though a significant number of nurses are expected to go on maternity leave in the coming months, Saner said they don’t expect the changes to impact staffing in the unit, which she noted employs nearly 200 nurses and support nurses.
“We have a lot of support nurses that can pick up [shifts]. We also have a lot of part-time staff that can pick up an extra day and so, we’re not too worried about the coverage,” Saner said.
The nurses said they have been exchanging tips and experiences with each other and expect their kids to grow up and play together.
“We’re all really excited and to be able to share this together,” Rileigh said. “This wasn’t like, our plan, but it just so happened to work out like that. We’re really just lucky to be able to go through this experience together.”
The unit’s colleagues all share a close and supportive relationship, according to Saner.
“It’s a really special bond between the nurses and I think they really enjoy being able to deliver each [other’s babies]. They’re just really comfortable and, you know, they trust the people that are in that room with them when they’re delivering and they just want them to care for them. So it’s a pretty cool thing,” she said.