36 NICU Nurses from 1 Hospital Are Due To Give Birth This Year in Adorable ‘Baby Boom’

Children's Mercy Kansas City

The nurses in the Neonatal Intensive Care Nursery at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, all have one incredible thing in common: 36 of them have either been recently pregnant or are currently pregnant and due this year. (Talk about a LOT of babies!) The hospital recently released a photo of the group, which shows the 21 babies that have already been born and the 15 mamas who still have a bun in the oven.

Allison Ronco was the first of the bunch to get pregnant, and she admitted it's actually pretty normal for many of the nurses to be pregnant at once.

Children's Mercy Kansas City

The 32-year-old nurse and critical care education coordinator told Good Morning America this week that she kicked off the baby boom with her son Henry, who was born January 7.

“We always have a baby boom going on like this," she joked. "For us, it is just our normal. Patients joke to not drink the water in this place unless you want to get pregnant," 

Still, it's sort of nice that the staff are going through their pregnancies together.

"We have an amazing support system," Ronco shared. "There is no shortage of parental advice among us.” 

So far, 21 babies have been born to staff at Children's Mercy. Even more interesting? A whopping 19 of them have been boys while only two so far have been girls.

“You’re immediately swept into this Mama Tribe, you and your baby,” said mom-to-be nurse Melanie Cole. “It is just a fun group to be able to grow with, learn from and always feel like you have someone in your corner that supports you and your baby.”

Being pregnant at the same time also meant the women rallied behind each other, through the many highs and lows.

Children's Mercy Kansas City

The nurses all work at the region's only Level IV NICU, which means that they handle "some of the most complex and critically ill infants in the Midwest," according to a statement from the hospital.

As one of the nurses, Sarah Carboneau knows this all too well. 

When her son Ben was born on February 9 with a heart defect, she looked to her coworkers for support. 

“I was a mess because I’ve seen a lot of things [as a nurse]," she told GMA. "It was an out-of-body experience because I knew what to expect when he was getting transported to the NICU. I was surrounded by everyone I knew. Feeling all of the love was overwhelming, but [Children’s Mercy] took amazing care of him and was able to [be] fixed with surgery a couple days later.”

Ben would go on to recover and is now healthy, but for Carboneau, those days when her son was sick were the hardest time of her life. 

“I was nervous about going back to work, as it was the most traumatic event of my life,” she recalled. “There was another baby with the same diagnosis with Ben. I talked with the mom to give her some peace of mind to share Ben’s experience … the positive outcome of Ben made me more grateful and blessed, and has reaffirmed what I do every day.

“These girls helped me get through this time in my life because they were able to support me even just by reminding me to eat and to bring me coffee,” she said.

“Most of us take our babies home as healthy babies, and to work where you help very sick babies gives you a different perspective and a whole new level of empathy,” Ronco added. "But no matter how hard things may seem, we do it because we love the babies.”

The women all agreed that they're excited to go through this process together, for so many reasons.

Good Morning America

Although pregnancy can be rough, the women have found a tremendous amount of support from going through the experience together. “We can chat about it and vent about it and be excited for each other,” nurse Michelle Janes, due November 29, told USA Today. "Especially those of us who already have kids. Many of us give each other opinions on things. We have a Facebook group and we weigh in on everything from diaper rash to kids crawling out of their crib."  

And these new mamas aren't afraid to celebrate. They'll often invite the other nurses to their baby showers, which tend to be held at unusual times (such as weekday mornings), to accommodate the nurse's differing shifts schedules. 

"It's great support and there's always a mass of toddlers running around," Janes said. "And they're all getting to recognize each other, and that's fun."

“We definitely truly are all really good friends,” Ronco said. “We are all raising these babies together.”