One Nurse, Two Generations of Babies, Same Hospital Room

It’s not uncommon for a hospital to deliver multiple generations of babies for one family. But how about deliveries spanning two generations with the same Labor & Delivery nurse, and with both deliveries occurring in the exact same hospital room nearly two decades apart? Now that is a long-running family affair!

On Feb. 18, that’s exactly what happened, when “Baby Legacy” was born in the same room that his mother, Kaycia Worthy, had been born in 16 years earlier. And at the bedside for both deliveries was long-time CCH Labor & Delivery Nurse Paula McGehee, RN.

Kaycia chose CCH to give birth to her first baby, to carry on the tradition of delivering in her community. In addition to Paula, she was surrounded by Certified Nurse Midwife Holly Drake, CNM, and Certified Nurse Midwife student Catie DeGraeve, SNM.

CCH has a rich history of growing families, as well as supporting student nurses, midwives and students from other disciplines. Paula, who has worked at CCH for more than three decades, has been part of thousands of births here, working alongside several other nurses – including her own daughter Kelli Donithan!

CCH has many Labor & Delivery nurses who have worked here for decades, including Denise Spivey-Johnson, Kellie Fuquay, Tammy Overton, Penny Moureau and Sandra Paschal. Many of them have followed in family members' footsteps or have had their own children follow them to CCH.

The legacy of Nurse Midwives and helping families at CCH is also strong and growing. CCH currently has three Nurse-Midwives: Holly Drake, Lekeshia Murphy-Spencer, and Love Josiah Tetteh, who joined the group last summer.

The trio will soon be adding Colleen Higdon, who has been working at Central Carolina Women’s Health Center as a women’s health Nurse Practitioner and is set to graduate from Frontier Nursing University with her post-masters certificate in Midwifery. This will allow the group to provide 24/7 midwifery care at CCH.

The midwives at CCH work with two supportive, collaborative doctors in Hakeem Yusuf, MD, and Eyra Agudu, MD, who also see patients at Central Carolina Women’s Health Center. They are available for C-sections and co-management should a patient's risk become such that they need medical intervention.

The legacy of Midwives at CCH started in the mid-1990s and continued successfully with a reputation of serving the community, drawing patients who desired the midwifery model of care not only locally, but also from other states.

While COVID and health insurance have initiated several changes over the past several years, leading to the consolidation of practices and changes at the hospital, CCH remains committed to the practice of midwives and caring for the beautiful birth legacy that started decades ago.

Pictured here with Baby Legacy are, left to right, Paula McGehee, RN; Baby Legacy’s grandmother; Baby Legacy’s parents, including Mom Kaycia Worthy; Holly Drake, CNM; and Catie Degraeve, Student Nurse Midwife.