Ann Milligan-Barnes Story Transcript
My name is Ann Milligan-Barnes, public health nurse for Durham County Health Department. I was a nurse for 48 years, I worked labor and delivery, I was the coordinator of Centering. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working with pregnant women.
When I was introduced to Centering, I had no desire whatsoever of doing it. We were already on a tight staff, we never had enough nurses. We always saw more patients than anybody in any clinic, because we work with a population that mainly does not have insurance. Where we were coming from as nurses – this was just an extra burden. So I was kind of upset. But you do what you have to do if you want to maintain your job.
So the Centering was a two-hour timeframe where you had one-on-one with the ladies. They liked it. And after I [laughs] barked and screamed and carried on I liked it because of the one-on-one time that I had with the ladies. And I always got in trouble because even after Centering somebody [always] wanted to linger around, and you couldn’t just say “No, I can’t answer your questions.” So I felt like doing Centering, I was able to provide better care for our patients.
And once we got in class, we just had a ball.
I said, “Oh, we’re really helping people, we can do a lot of one-on-one.” Because some days, it was not uncommon for us to see 48 women in the shift that we worked, which was more than eight hours, it was like 10 hours. I was just overjoyed that the Health Department was able to offer something that had been offered for a long time in the private sector for people with insurance and people that could afford it. I was overjoyed that we were able to offer this same benefit to our patients – low-income, no-insurance patients. That they could know that they could be treated, and loved on.
We had some challenges. And we had some deaths, that was really hard. And that’s when I saw that what I was doing was making a difference. Because we had a young lady that lost her baby at 24 weeks gestation, I think. And the whole group was just upset, and [asking], “What can we do to help her?” And they came up with ideas. The group did. I mean, I had my own ideas, but it was like, “Okay, well let’s see as a group, what do you guys think that she should do? What do you think will help her? I know what I think will help, because I’ve done this before. But this is one of your peers. What do you think will help?” And they came up with a suggestion, and suggested it to her and she took it. They said that she and her partner needed to get away, and go to the beach. And that’s what they did. You know, grieve your loss alone. And that’s what people don’t seem to get. People want to be around you when you have a loss. And it was the same with this young lady and her partner. But the group came up with what I would have suggested, I think, probably. They came up with it, and I thought it was awesome. And she came back, her and her partner, and they were just so much better people. And she said that she would never forget the generosity and everything that we did, and how we made her feel that she was still loved. And she still came back.
At the end of each session, moms and babies come back. And so she said if it was okay, could she come back to our – I call it my Parade of Babies – but to the end, where we make sure that mom is okay, where we pick up maybe [on] postpartum depression, make sure that the baby’s okay, make sure that mom is connected to family planning if that’s what she want[s], make sure that the babies have their immunization and their pediatric stuff. So they would come back, and it was like a big ol’ party. Everybody likes to show off their babies. So they would bring them back. And I got permission, I would take that baby and march it through the clinic. That’s why we call it the Parade of Babies. We were closed on Fridays, so it wasn’t there were patients in there, it was just staff.
Each little group was a family. Some continued that family, others did not. But everyone out of my groups partnered up with somebody that they, to this day, still stay in contact with. So it was really like a family.
Read a transcript of the full interview here.