When third-year University of Virginia nursing student Madi Wilson woke up that chilly late February morning, Rachelle Aurand – who lives nearly an hour outside of Charlottesville in Louisa and was 38 1/2 weeks pregnant – was already in labor.
Wilson showered and donned her blue nursing scrubs, readying herself for her first-ever clinical rotation in labor and delivery; across town, Aurand and her husband had already arrived at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital.
Aurand – who’d suffered a miscarriage a year earlier with the pre-term birth of her baby, Noelle – had carried this child to term, and was already 4 centimeters dilated and in active labor when she met the freshly arrived Wilson, Sentara nurse and preceptor Elizabeth Eldredge and UVA clinical instructor Suzanne Wentworth, on the unit.
To speed her labor, doctors administered Pitocin, and expected the Aurands’ baby to be born within an hour or two, but as morning turned to afternoon, it was clear the delivery wasn’t progressing. Aurand, awash in pain, had a low platelet count that, combined with her health history, made her ineligible for a pain-blocking epidural. Her nurses administered laughing gas to ease the process, but as Aurand’s contractions grew stronger into the afternoon, the pain overwhelmed her, causing even her hearing to waft in and out.
