Nurse of the Week: Kayla McMillan, Labor and Delivery Nurse Gifts Maternity Photo Shoots to Pregnant Mothers on Hospital Bed Rest

Our Nurse of the Week is Kayla McMillan, 28, a labor and delivery nurse at the Duke Birthing Center in Durham who has been gifting maternity photo shoots to pregnant mothers on hospital bed rest. She was inspired by her own experience giving birth to her daughter, Emma, at just 25 weeks due to eclampsia.

Emma is now a healthy 1-year old, but McMillan remembers what it was like to have to cancel her baby shower and maternity photo shoot, fun things she had been looking forward to and things that usually accompany a normal pregnancy. McMillan tells InsideEdition.com:

“It was really surreal just because I work in a place where things happen like this all the time. I am a nurse and I never thought something like that would happen to me. It’s humbling because now I can help moms in the same position that I was in.”

McMillan likes to practice photography as a hobby and decided she wanted to give something to mothers at Duke University Hospital who were going through something similar to what she experienced. She teamed up with co-worker Samantha Duncan to create their first maternity photo shoot in April for a mom confined to her hospital bed.

Duncan is in charge of hair and makeup for the women, while McMillan wheels them out into a beautiful courtyard on Duke’s campus for the photo shoots. The duo has since done six photo shoots, giving pregnant mothers on bed rest something to cherish from the difficult experience.

To learn more about McMillan’s career as a labor and delivery nurse and new hobby taking maternity photos for women on her unit, visit here.