Because my mom is a nurse, she has a lot of nurse friends that I could have reached out to, but I chose to interview someone in a specialty I plan to go into. Her name is Rachel, and she is a Registered Nurse in Labor and Delivery at Sentara Princess Anne. She is currently working with her associates degree. Rachel says that losing her dad at a young age inspired her to want to work in the nursing field. She wasn’t always a Labor and Delivery nurse, she worked in the CCU at one point. She said that throughout her life she has been working somewhere in the medical field. She worked at a pain management clinic when she was younger, she moved on to acute care when she became an RN, then moved her way to the CCU, and ended up in L&D. The responsibility of an L&D nurse is to take care of both the mother and baby and constantly monitor them. She says, “we have to be three nurses in one”. She went on to say that this is because they have to triage them, lead them to their labor, and they also have to be able to circulate in the OR (which is something I did not know)! She says that their “basic roll is making sure mom and baby are okay until they deliver”. After the delivery has taken place the mom stays with them for about two hours before moving over to mother baby, and during that time nursery takes over with the baby. She claims that the most rewarding aspect of her job is “helping people have the most memorable moment of their lives and making sure that it happens in a healthy environment”. The most surprising aspect of L&D to her is “the different ways that people handle laboring”. The most challenging aspect of the job for her is “the unknown” because every delivery is different and you really never know what’s going to happen. She says, “it’s very difficult because there are very many different avenues it can take”. She says, they deal with a lot of good, but there are still instances of bad. For example, she says there are times when they deal with demises where the baby doesn’t have a heartbeat, but it still has to be delivered, or a mother may deliver too early and the baby is just not viable. Sometimes you can expect a healthy baby, and it won’t always end up that way. Rachel says that the L&D “is probably one of the hardest places emotionally” she’s worked in out of the three. She says that although there is good, you still have to learn to deal with the possible negatives that come out of it. Her advice to me about going into the medical field was that “sometimes you don’t get to start exactly where you want to but the great thing about nursing is that you can go to any specialty you’d like”. She says to “hang in there because you have to start somewhere”. She says that the most important aspect of nursing is that you have to learn to deal with you emotions and “know how to keep going but still feel”. Interviewing Rachel gave me a different view on Labor and delivery than I’d had before because now I realize that it’s not always positive. This interview has opened my eyes and has made me want to pursue a career in this specialty even more.