ARTICLE DATEARTICLE AUTHOR AUTHOR EMAIL May 13, 2021
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.