Above and beyond: MFM nurses, staff spring into action to fulfill patient’s wedding wish

August 25, 2015

What would you do if your pregnant patient, who was five centimeters dilated, told you in the examination room, “I need to get married before I have my baby?”

For Dr. Karla Wagner and her Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) team at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women, the response to their patient’s request was a no brainer. Instead of saying no, they embraced this rare and exciting opportunity.

“We knew how important it was for our patient to get married before her baby arrived,” said Aimee Jackson, a nurse practitioner and clinical manager for maternal medicine at Texas Children’s Fetal Center. “It wasn’t a matter of, “Can it happen?” It was more like, “It will happen.”

With little time on their side, the MFM staff sprung into action to fulfill their patient’s wedding wish. Within an hour, they pieced together a simple, yet elegant ceremony for expectant mom Stephanie Tallent and her soon-to-be husband Jason Nece.

The couple planned to get married over the weekend, but their plans abruptly changed on August 21 when Wagner discovered during Stephanie’s reassessment exam that she was five centimeters dilated and her baby was still breeched. Luckily, the couple had their marriage license in the car along with a white sundress that Stephanie planned to drop off at the dry cleaners.

With these two items checked off the list, the rest of the components for the ceremony fell perfectly into place.

“Stephanie got the good luck tradition for a bride,” Wagner said. “She borrowed a beautiful pearl necklace from one of my nurses, we found something blue, we decorated the room with flowers, and I gave her a bouquet of roses that I grabbed from my office so she could hold it as she walked down the aisle.”

The staff rounded up the wedding troops to ensure every detail of the ceremony was covered. Texas Children’s videographer Wally Crow and photographer Allen Kramer captured the ceremony, maternal fetal scheduler Ashanti Riggs sang a cappella and the hospital’s chaplain Johnna Faber officiated the ceremony.

Wagner’s primary nurse Susan Hardee Crosky played the “Wedding March” on her cell phone, as Wagner walked her patient down the hallway aisle into Clinical Room 3 where Stephanie and Jason exchanged their vows in front of a congregation of roughly 25 Texas Children’s MFM employees.

At the end of the ceremony, the staff quickly scrawled on a piece of paper, “Just Married” and stuck it on the back of Stephanie’s wheelchair before she was whisked away to the delivery room. Later that afternoon, Stephanie and her husband welcomed their precious baby girl, Sophia, who was delivered by caesarean section.

“I love the maternal fetal department,” Stephanie said. “They pulled everything together at the last minute and did an unbelievable job. We cannot be any happier than we are right now.”

For Wagner, she is proud of her team who went above and beyond to meet the spiritual needs of her patient.

“We value the importance of family and spiritual values,” Wagner said. “We all came together as a team on such short notice to make this couple’s wish come true, while at the same time, meeting the medical needs of our other patients in clinic.”