Nathalie Thermidor was scared. She couldn’t feel her baby moving and her “blood pressure was so high,” she says. Emergency medical providers at Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital told her she had pre-eclampsia and would need a long hospital stay.

For the expectant mother, this would mean significant alone time. Her husband was working two jobs. Her family was in Florida, where she’d lived before moving to Indiana. “I told my husband I’m not going to stay,” says Thermidor. “How am I going to make it?”

It didn’t help that she was already anxious about this first baby. “I’ve been waiting to get pregnant a long time,” she says. In fact, she’d been so shocked to hear she was pregnant after 10 years of trying that she’d bought two pregnancy tests when her doctor told her.

After she tearfully confided to one of her first nurses, “I have nobody in Indiana,” Thermidor recalls receiving a reassuring reply: “We’re going to be there for you. You don’t have to cry. You’re going to make it. You are in good hands.”

Thermidor soon discovered the truth of those words: The nurses and patient technicians in Eskenazi Health Family Beginnings had no intention of letting her feel lonely during well over a month in their care.

“Since day one, they say they got my back,” says Thermidor. “They never make me feel I’m alone.”

Her medical team decorated her hair with red hair bows for the Indiana University football national championship games, an experience that Thermidor was so touched by that it was “making me cry.” One nurse brought her to watch the Super Bowl with other nurses during their break. Her hair was braided on more than one occasion, and she received support from a doula and an Eskenazi Health board-certified music therapist.

She remembers her nurses telling her, “I don’t want you even one day to feel not OK.” “I don’t have the words,” Thermidor says.

Originally from Haiti, Thermidor bonded with Malon Weah, RN, who introduced her to patients with the same background in Family Beginnings, hoping shared culture would lead to long-term ties. Sarah Smith, RN, a Family Beginnings nurse, followed up on these efforts.

“I can say now in Indiana I have a lot of friends because of Malon and Sarah,” says Thermidor.

Her nurses took Thermidor with them to a DAISY Award presentation, an honor for outstanding nurses. “I was excited,” says Thermidor. She jumped up cheering when she heard Weah was a nominee.

Smith has become “family to me,” says Thermidor. “My little sister, my everything.”

Erika “Shane” Long, a patient care technician, would check on her even if not working in the unit. “She always finds something to make you happy, to make you laugh,” Thermidor says.

When Thermidor’s sister, a mother of four, visited from Florida, she was relieved by the caliber of care she witnessed her sibling receiving. She shared with Thermidor that she’d never experienced so much care from nurses in a hospital.

Even with such support, Thermidor became restless as the weeks passed. She confessed to her nursing team that the view out her window of a snow-covered parking garage was tempting her to leave against medical advice.

Her nurses sprang into action to revive her spirits, moving her to a new room and throwing a surprise shower that brought tears to her eyes. One nurse even joined the celebration on her day off. Pointing at the balloons still hanging from the occasion, Thermidor says, “Because my baby’s small, she [Smith] makes them small too.”

“All the nurses … they have a good heart,” says Thermidor. When she learned from her doctor that the baby’s heart rate was fast, her nurses visited her as a group to ease her worries.

Knowing her baby’s small size meant Thermidor would be in Eskenazi Health Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) next, her nurses took her on a tour there. They wanted her to feel as comfortable with the NICU medical team as she was with them.

Before Thermidor left Family Beginnings, she was so at ease that she joked with her husband, “You don’t have to come see me. I don’t need you to come …. I’m with my family here.”

Looking at the nurses gathered to visit with her, Thermidor says, “I don’t know how I’m going to live without them.”