Becoming A Mom Influenced Decision To Be A Nurse – Wgnsradio

(L-R) Amber and Wendy both following their dreams as a nurse.

(MURFREESBORO) "As early as kindergarten, I knew I wanted to be a nurse," says Wendy Underwood, an RN and team lead in the NICU at Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital. Wendy played "nurse" and wrote about her pretend patients in a little notebook she treasured as a young girl. She would ultimately obtain her nursing education at Columbia State Community College in Franklin.

ADVERTISEMENT

During one rotation at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown (then known as Baptist hospital), Wendy was given an impromptu tour of the NICU by a more experienced nurse. "I truly wish I knew that nurse's name, but I can tell you now that she forever changed the course of my career," says Wendy. Wendy felt an immediate tug in heart towards NICU babies and wanted to serve them and their mothers however she could.

Her calling became even more personal when Wendy and her husband became parents themselves. She was still completing nursing school when her daughter Amber was born in 1996 at Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford, then known as MTMC. Amber was born prematurely and required extra care in the "special care area," a precursor of the NICU. Wendy says that watching the nurses care for her daughter during this stressful time was further confirmation that she was destined to work in the NICU.

Today, Amber is a healthy young adult following in her mother's footsteps by studying nursing at Columbia State. Wendy suspects that, for many nurses: "It's in our blood. I think most of us are born with it."

Further evidence that this calling is all in the family? Amber's great-grandmother on her father's side was a nurse in Rutherford County from 1962 to 1977. Her name was Letisha Breedlove Stoker and her portrait hangs on a wall at Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford.

Read more:

Becoming A Mom Influenced Decision To Be A Nurse - Wgnsradio