There must be something in the water at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Grande Prairie. Nine nurses from the Acute Care floor have all recently given birth or are expecting in the next few months.
Nurse and expectant first-time mother Kiersten McFadyen says since they’ve all announced their pregnancies earlier this year, the water cooler has been taken away.
“We had a long-standing joke: there was a water cooler at work, and we were all saying there’s something in the water, don’t drink the water. Not very long after the last one announced we came in and the water cooler was broken; I still think somebody did it on purpose.”
New mom Jessica Leduc was the first nurse of the bunch to have her baby. She says that while there have been other women on other floors of the hospital who have been pregnant at the same time, this is the biggest group yet.
“We always get waves but this is the biggest wave for one floor all at the same time from what we know.”
The first baby arrived on Christmas and the last is set to arrive in August. Second-time mom Monika Ruether says it’s exciting to go through this as a big group.
“We’re already like a really close group to start with… so to share all this it’s more exciting, nobody has bad feelings about it, it’s all really exciting.”
According to the women, management has been busy looking for replacements but they suspect nursing students coming out of school will fill in for them on maternity leave.