Baby boom ahead? Arizona hospital has 16 pregnant nurses

Paige Packard, right, and Allison Thompson, second from right, hold up baby outfits Friday, Aug. 17, 2018, in Mesa, Ariz., as they join most of the sixteen pregnant nurses who work together in the intensive care unit at Banner Desert Medical Center as they attend a news conference as they talk about all being pregnant at the same time, with most of them due to give birth between October and January. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

A baby boom is brewing at an Arizona hospital, where 16 intensive care nurses recently discovered that all of them are pregnant.

Nurse Jolene Garrow quipped, “We all formulated this plan to have the holidays off!”

The nurses at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, outside Phoenix, joked Friday they thought there was something in the water when it became clear they were all expecting babies between October and January.

Nurse Rochelle Sherman, nearly eight months along, said: “I don’t think we realized just how many of us were pregnant until we started a Facebook group.”

“I know a couple of us did fertility treatments,” Nurse Paige Packard said at a news conference Friday.

“That’s how I ended up finding out that everyone was pregnant. I was like, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t plan this. Did we have some kind of pact going I didn’t know about?’“ Packard said.

Ashley Adkins worried that the other nurses are getting tired of their pregnancy-focused conversations.

“They just roll their eyes!” she laughed. “More baby talk!”

The nurses said their colleagues are throwing a group baby shower next week.

The hospital on Friday gave the women one-piece rompers reading, “Relax! My mom is a Banner nurse!”

Hospital officials noted that the Banner medical center chain has a pool of floating nurses that should ensure shifts are covered when their ICU nursing specialists begin taking their 12-week maternity leaves starting in the fall.

“The 16 nurses are from three different critical care units,” said Heather Francis, nursing director for various ICU units at Banner.

Garrow said that as their pregnancies have progressed, the patients have begun noticing that most of the nurses around them are expecting.

One patient insisted on touching her belly the night before, she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.