110 - Stella Reid Pt 1: I Saw My First Birth at 12 Years Old

Join tenured nurse and Spokane, Washington native Honored Guest Stella Reid as she chats about the two-day NCLEX “back in the day,” her extensive family, memory making, the interesting way she decided to become a nurse, and more!

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Feeding Our Young podcast. As has been established in the prior two episodes that if things go to plan, you have listened, long time listener or every episode listener, you've heard these episodes last week and the week before. So it's three weeks your time, but it's one day my time. This is my first triple threat day where I've got to sit down with three incredible human beings. And this is session number three. The reason why I bring that up is because I'm already noticing my voice. Sounds like I've been through... I finally hit puberty, everybody. It's finally happened. I am now almost a man. It's so amazing. Anyway, so without further ado, I'm not gonna waste this incredible person's time. She is Stellar, quite literally, S-T-E-L-L-A-R, the one and only Stella Reed. Stella, how the heck are you this evening, late afternoon? I am good, Eric. Thank you. Awesome. That took the place of a different intro, and what I was going to say to everybody is that, you know, we'll just right off the bat. Stella, where do you work? I work at labor and delivery at Sacred Heart Medical Center. That's so strange. I work in postpartum there. I might have seen you on occasion. No, I just want to get that out of the gate because we have in the Birth Place there's, know, as any unit you have, there's a wide mix of people, personalities, backgrounds, ages, experiences, and getting all that to gel sometimes is fun, sometimes is less than fun. And that's the reason, part of the reason why feeding our young exists. still, like there's just some people. Okay. A with their patients, grade A with other nurses, whatever the case may be, and those people are usually the hardest to get in studio. They're like the unicorns of the world. And I have one! I caught one today! Her name is Stella! No, so thank you, so much for taking some of your time to hang out with me. Are you ready to do this thing? I am. I love it. So with that, we've already kind of established who you are, but where's home? Where are you from, stuff? I was born and raised here in Spokane, Washington. I was born in the 1960s and I grew up in the 80s and I'm still trekking along. Oh my gosh, living and breathing and everything. how was it without electricity back in the day? Just kidding. But definitely without internet. I mean, I remember a time before internet. Goodness gracious. Yeah, I never had a computer for a paper until I was in nursing school. And I used the computer in the computer lab at the University of Washington. So never had a home computer until I was married with kids. my gosh, so did you take the paper and collect or did you take a computer and collect? I took the paper NCLEX. It was on July 9th and 10th of 1991 in the Tacoma Dome with my eight number two pencils. Ah, listen to that, nursing students, as bad as it gets, and this is not to make you feel bad, as bad as it gets, it could be worse. A two day NCLEX. Just open the door to that really quick. Give people perspective on what that looked like. So one of my best study mates in nursing school, her name was Stephanie, which is my middle name. So we were always quite the pair, Stella and Stephanie. We were study buddies and we got a hotel room in Tacoma for two nights and we had a stack of NCLEX study question books and we spent two days asking each other questions back and forth. And we spent eight hours per day for two days in a row. with a lunch break and two potty breaks in the Tacoma Dome with every nurse in the state of Washington taking the NCLEX in July of 1991. Wow! Wow! didn't take it on July 9th and 10th of 1991, you weren't going to be allowed to take it again until the following February. So if you missed it or you didn't pass it, it didn't happen again for six more months. It was offered twice a year in the Tacoma Dome in the state of Washington for every Washington graduate. Hear ye, hear ye, Washingtonians, come or don't. It's up to you. Here's your one, once in a twice a year chance to get your license. my gosh. And of course, being a product of both the western and eastern sides of our state, I feel like I'm qualified to say how arrogant. It just makes sense that you have to go to the Tacoma Dome, but I also imagine there's probably no equivalent here on the eastern side of the state at that time either. You needed something big enough to be proctored for every every nursing student. Yep. In the state. 16 hours you guys, 16, eight hours a day times two shifts. You're working regular, you two regular job shifts, just taking the NCLEX exam. All right, so enough on that. We're not spending a whole episode talking about the NCLEX, but thank you for that perspective. It's a nice reminder. So with that, what degree or degrees do you carry and where did you get them from? I do have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Washington. Fantastic. So let's go with our traditional opening questions. What were the three words that you have chosen to describe nursing school? I picked difficult because I couldn't find a harder word. It was overwhelming and it was obtainable. And that's, I love that we end on that one. So we'll chat about those at the end of your episode or episodes, depending on how long we chat. But also on that note, the other opening questions we like to ask. So what are three of your favorite songs in life right now? It's funny, my daughter just asked me this question the other day, what my favorite song was, because she said she didn't know. I know. And it's funny. I did. I did go to a concert last night and I saw Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, who are Seattle natives, who I have seen four times. I have not really seen them. I saw them in the 80s back when I was Yeah! Yeah. And I did see him once in 2006, and then I saw him last night and it was amazing. So song wise, I like many, many different genres of songs. And in my old age of now being a grandma, I really like reflective music, but I still hold on to a little bit of what really made me. The songs that I told my daughter that I loved, one of my most favorite songs, it's called Some Kind of Wonderful. And it's a song that my husband and I have, it was one song I could get him up to dance with me with, you know, when we were dating and getting married. And one of my twins did a tap dance, used that for a talent in a Miss Spokane. outstanding teen competition and she won. So I always say it's a good luck charm. So I'm kind of wonderful. And then I really like music that tells a story. So I danced with my son at his wedding to always be humble and kind. So that's going to be one of my favorite memories with a song that really talks about you should always call your mother and you always should be humble and kind. ho. And listen to that song, listen to that first part right there. Also the second part, but the first part in particular. Yeah, and my third song is going to be a shout out to my very best friend who is an OBGYN that we work with, Dr. Mathia. And that's going to be pretty much any AC/DC song because, you know, we're heavy metal rockers of the 1980s. And I love that about you guys. love like, you know, the whole social media stalking and, you know, of course to talk about it at work and all the things, but I just love that. I'm like, you know, you just give me Thunderstruck. That is one of the top five running songs I've got. When you need a little boost of adrenaline, if you listen to that and it doesn't give you said boost of adrenaline, you are dead inside. I'm so sorry. We have diagnosed you. It is done. Okay, so Stella, then there are not yet patented. likely never patented, unofficial, feeding our young personality test. Are you ready to have it administered to you? It is not eight hours over today, so that's good news. Five questions. Can you verify that you have not prepared for these questions? You have no idea what I'm about to ask you. I love it. This is the level of trust she has currently. I will try not to abuse it. Okay, here we are. And you can give rationale if you want, or you can just give your answer and we'll move on to the next. Would you rather have the ability to fly or breathe underwater? Breathe underwater. Are you part of team pie or team cake? Team pie. Would you rather instantly learn a new language or a new musical instrument? Ooh, that's difficult. I would choose both. We've never had a both. I've never allowed a both, but Stella, I'm gonna defer to your wisdom and your experience. And first time, and maybe last time, she gets to pick both. Okay, you've just been granted a time machine. Are you gonna go back to the past, or are you gonna go see the future? Oh gosh. Take the future. Okay, and see, I'm saving the hardest hitting question for last. Personal connection here. Is Wham's song titled Last Christmas really a Christmas song? Well, I am changing my answer to yes only because I have so enjoyed the Miller videos of how many times the Wham! Christmas song can play in their Christmas season. I don't know, I might have talked about it the first time I administered this not patented personality. Because by the way, your results are in your amazing, by the way. I mean, I know that you had suspected that, but it is confirmed today. But no, I don't know if I've talked about it, but yes, that was a tradition I've had since my early teens. So I'm dating myself there a little bit. But anytime it came out, would just personally, I would count them for that season. One, it was kind of a... commentary on how often songs are played during Christmas season and how very few selection there is of them. But also, I'm a George Michael fan, love that guy's voice, he had a voice of gold. And so I really enjoyed the song, I was like, that's great. So then it got picked up by my family, is what Stella's referring to, and as the kids have gotten older, then they picked that up. So then they're like, well, okay, we need to have a family total. Well, yeah, but okay, but, so the first year we did that, I had to hear it. I had to be the one to hear it. So they would record a little snippet. I'm like, okay, all right, yeah, that counts. If everybody, if two people heard it on the radio at the same time from different radios, it only counted as one. But there's all these little rules we kind of made up as we went along. And then the following year, was like, well, okay, whoever hears it, and you have to hear it in the wild. You can't play it on Spotify. You can't play it on, you have to hear it in the wild. So what I loved about it, Stella, and I don't know if you know this, but well, yeah, because it made that video that year. So we were taking video clips that year and kind of compiling them and. throwing out like 10 at a time, like how we heard them. And they just came from all members of my immediate family, my kids, my wife, myself. But that same year, so I was walking down the hall, Jackie, was still nights, so Jackie's walking down the hall toward me and she just holds up her phone and turns the volume up and what's playing. And she's like, hey, Eric, does this count? I was like, well, I just heard it in the wild, so yeah. So, you know, I just love it. It's just a fun thing. So yeah, it's a. It's a yearly thing and so it's the opposite of I think there's the whole Wham Again thing, right? Like if you hear it, your Christmas is ruined and you try and go as far as you can without hearing it. No, our goal is to hear it as often as possible. And yes, we do get sick of it by the end of Christmas season. So that was it. That was the, that was, we are 12 minutes into Stella's episode and we have talked zero nursing. So let's get on track because both of us have the propensity to maybe say Okay, well, I was born into a very typical, very Catholic family. I had four brothers and I was the only girl right smack dab in the middle. So two older brothers, two younger brothers. So I grew up very much as a tomboy. I went to a Catholic school and was required to wear a dress every day as a uniform to school, but was not a very frilly, frilly girl growing up. And I had four brothers that all played hockey. And if I couldn't join them, I could beat them. So I became a hockey referee. And so I used to be a lineman and get to be like an official in the little kids' games pretty much. So that's probably a fact some people don't know about me. Then I grew up and got married and God thought he would play a really funny trick on me and gave me three of the glitteriest glitter girly girl girls that you could find ever on the universe. And I'm pretty sure we're the only family that has killed multiple dryers with glitter. The STD of the craft world, as it's well known. Yes. So I have three daughters. I have one son. I have a set of twins, which my mother is also a twin and had a twin brother. And my husband would tell you the story that we had two children. We had a girl and a boy. They were potty trained and slept all night in their own beds. And I told him I really felt like I needed to have one more baby. And my husband said to me, if I could guarantee him a boy, he would do it in a minute. So of course, I got pregnant with twin girls. So for 25, almost 26 years, I have had to hear about rolling the dice one more time. And I hear that phrase as well as, let's have one more, you know, because I got two. yeah, yeah... oh my gosh Wouldn't give them back. So I'm very much into memory, memory making. I'm a huge scrapbooker. I journal a bit, mostly just as far as picture memories, know, journaling the experience of the memory of the kids. And now I have a granddaughter, so with my granddaughter. So that's another... big piece that I kind of take over into nursing with me is I am very much about the memories, you know, the experience, the memory, in all things, whether our job that day is happy or sad. And because that is a part of nursing, we sometimes in labor and delivery or mom, baby, don't talk about is it isn't 100 % always happy. We have that little thread of not so happy sometimes. Huge sorrow, huge sorrow. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. I love it. I mean, you kind of, the next question was your hobbies. So I feel like you kind of just, yeah, I love it. What more do you want to say about your hobbies there? I'm very big into family. Like I said, I grew up in a large family. I have four children, which I think nowadays is probably considered a pretty good size family. Back in the day, my dad is one of nine, so not quite that big. But my family's very important to me. My family includes people that I did not biologically give birth to. So I have very strong loyalty to my friends and my coworkers that are my other family. And we'll talk a little bit about that, I think, later when we get into the nursing piece. yeah, family's big and important to me. We spend a lot of time together. We have a place at Diamond Lake, so we have a lot of summer memories. And it's kind of interesting because when our lake cabin became habitable in the wintertime. I was the only one that would really go up there and I'd go up there with scrapbooking with my friends and we'd leave our mess out for three or four days. And then all of a sudden, Pend Oreille County opened up ice fishing. So pretty much the wintertime late cabin is always a disaster of fishing gear and winter gear and it's not as nice and pristine for the scrapbookers like it used to be. So, but we spend a lot of time there and we make a lot of memories and then I like to, you know, scrapbook those memories and kind of keep them fresh for the kids. And when my kids graduated from high school, I presented them with a big stack of scrapbooks and You know, they're in their 20s now. My oldest is in her 30s. And I think if you would ask my kids what some of their favorite things are that they would tell you, it's the scrapbooks of their dancing and their school and their competitions. And my son played hockey. you know, my son helped my husband from eight years old, you know, building our lake place. And I've got, you know, pictures of him five, six, seven years old in an excavator digging holes, you know. my goodness. a lot of fun memory making there. So the Pacific Northwest, love the outdoors. Summer, we winter. We spend a lot of time together as a family. I'm very adept at making meals for 17 to 30 people, no problem. That is not a talent I have myself, so I admire that for sure. That's incredible. okay, so to circle back around, this is more a curiosity question than anything. off record, if there's a question I ask and you're like, no, let's not talk about that. That's not even just because it's sensitive, by all means. So circling back around. Just out of my own curiosity because and I'll open up a little door here, too But you say you come from a Catholic family your parents were Catholic multiple children So my wife's grandmother very much Catholic. She was the great the late great Mary Joan Buck I'm gonna immortalize her here in this little episode because she was 120 % Catholic and she was a hundred and twenty percent nurse and she was a hundred and twenty percent mom and grandma She loved her. You know, I mean all the things and so all that to say very much that four boys and a girl, in her case, her daughter, my wife's mom, was the last one, but all very biblical names. So Stella, to me, I don't know, that does not sound biblical to me. Do your brothers have biblical names? How did this come to be? Yes, very, very good question. So my mother is Italian. So her mother's name was Stella. And when my grandma, she was my grandma, I'm named after my grandma. When her parents came to America, they did not speak English. And so my grandma didn't speak English till she went to school. So four or five years old, she only spoke Italian. Her sisters were Mary and Ruth. So I'm not sure where Stella came from for my great grandma. I don't know how my grandma got named Stella, but I got named Stella for my mom's mom. So for my grandma, Stella and. And my granddaughter's name is Stella. And so my son has kept that little tradition. So now I'm expecting Stella's to have a granddaughter named Stella, you know, in a few in a few decades, but, know, down the road. Yeah, but if you if you flip to my dad's side of the family, my dad was very Irish, OK, very Irish Catholic family, one of nine children. My grandpa's name was James. My dad's name was James. My brother's name is James. You're getting that there? Yep. Yeah. My other brother is Timothy. Okay. Yeah. And then we have a Sean Patrick. And my youngest brother is a Denny Michael. So Denny isn't really... And it's not Dennis, it's just Denny. He's also named for my mom's brother. So we did all of this naming for each other. Our family is very, we steal names and we steal birthdays. So it's kind of funny because my nephew, Aaron Michael, you heard that Michael before, my other nephew, Layton stole his birthday. So when my granddaughter was coming, right, My nephew's very good friends with my son, they're best buddies, and he calls him up and he's like, you need Stella to steal my birthday back because it had already been stolen by another cousin. So we have a lot of birthday buddies. My great niece is born on my birthday. My nephew is, my great nephew's born on my dad's birthday. We've got nine Fourth of July birthdays in the family. Yeah, nine, yeah. And to be clear, I'm assuming these are, and sorry for using the terminology for those that might be uncomfortable with it, but I'm assuming these are vaginal births, not like planned cesarean sections, or maybe did a couple squeak in there that were like, let's do this day. Yeah, my granddaughter who is not a birthday stealer, she did miss that my nephew's birthday by two days. She was a C-section, I think she's our first C-section sort of in my immediate family. I have another nephew's wife also had C-sections for anatomical reasons. Well, her babies breach, you know, so her babies breach. but other than that, yeah, other than those two C-sections, I think everybody else. has been a vaginal birth. So, yeah. is everybody. I know this is, we're going deeper than we've ever gone before on anyone's family. But you know, I mean, you have to forgive us. We both work in a women's world. did want to throw out there, Eric, too. I told you I went to Catholic school. So I was in the neighborhood. There were three other girls on my block that were my friends. We all had brothers. We were all the only sister in the family, the three of us. And one family was Lutheran. One family was Presbyterian. And then the third friend, they were also Catholic, but they didn't go to Catholic school. So they went to church on Sundays. And so I felt very robbed going to Catholic school that I didn't get to go to Sunday school because even my friend who was Catholic that didn't go to Catholic school, she got to go to Sunday school. So I went to a lot of Lutheran and Presbyterian Sunday school with my friends on Sundays and So I feel like even though I was, I feel that I was deeply rooted in Catholicism and raised to, you know, have this very strong belief, I am of the belief that there are many religions out there that, that mine is not the end all, be all, if you will. And I feel that I can say that really well because I spent a lot of time in their education departments. And really I used to tell my mom, but mom, they copy everything. So like, I wasn't learning anything new. Yeah, yeah, so, you know. Well, okay, we'll finish. I'm gonna, I'll bookend this discussion with the reason why I asked that too, because you know, anyone who knows me, I don't think I've shared this part either, maybe I have, I don't know. At this point, I don't care, I'm sharing it again. But I oftentimes, my wife and I, it's been established, we have five children. One died many years ago before the others were born, so we have one in heaven and four quote unquote alive. And so the reason why I bring that up, and we've talked about it before in previous episodes, all the things, this is not a, let's go down and talk about Eric's story. All I wanna bring up is again, the great Mary Joan Buck, 120 % Catholic. Our first son's name was Micah, right? Okay, so then he unfortunately dies. And it takes us a minute to figure out if we have more kids. It really didn't take as long as we maybe thought or probably should have thought. Just kidding. Love our kids. But then she gets pregnant within a month of us deciding, OK, we're going to do this. We were talking about having a second child at that time. So we had another boy, the only two boys we've had, out of our five children. And so. We were going through names and all things. We land on, and we didn't at first. It took like pairing the names together, right? So we paired it with a family name on my side of the family named Sloane. My great-great-great grandfather and his dad, Civil War era, middle name, they were James Sloane Miller. So anyway, we pair Sloane with Owen. So he's Owen Sloane Miller. Yeah, we're like, yeah, we love it. That sounds great. that almost seems like a private investigator. don't know. name's amazing. So that's what we land on for the boy name for him. So he's born, he's born, yeah, he's ended up being a boy. So Owen Sloane he is. So the first time my wife's grandma meets him and she's like, and what'd name him again? I'm Owen, Owen Sloane. And you just see like the look on her face. She's like, hmm, hmm, mm-hmm. Okay, so like not Josiah or James or anything. Yeah, no grandma, we did that with Micah and things didn't work out and we're not going against it just to, you know what I mean? We weren't even necessarily picking a biblical name, know what I mean? Purposefully the first time. We just loved what the name Micah meant and all the things. And so we're like, no, we're going with Owen. And she goes, okay. Well, do you mind if I call him James? And I just said, you know what, you're 90 years old. You've earned the right to call him whatever you want. She always called him Owen, but it just was one of those things. And I tell my families, know, a lot of families these days, you know, yeah, I thought I have two kids and yeah, we're good and whatever. So I always tell them, or the families that have more than two, I say any family that has more than two kids, they're crazy. And I just let it marinate for a second before I tell them we have five of our own and all the things. But then I quickly follow that with no offensive fear of this persuasion, but no, I'm not Catholic. No, I'm not Mormon. And yes, we believed in birth control. Top three questions we get every time. Every time. my goodness. All right, well let's, okay. This is quickly apparent to me. We're gonna become a double episode. Stella's going to be a double episode. We wanna make that, we're gonna honor her time, but we're also gonna honor yours. So we're gonna, I'll lead off with that most important first, they're all important. the first nursing question that we want to discuss and we'll discuss that to close this episode and then we'll jump in to the second episode. But this topic that you wanted to bring up was what made you, Stella, pick nursing? I know I might have mentioned this to you Eric when we talked about doing the podcast, but you know was the only girl in my family I told you that part and when I was 12 years old I was in sixth grade and remember I went to a Catholic school. Yeah. was very sheltered. TV was not what TV is today. And I remember watching a program and there was all of this parental discretion that was prefacing this show. And I don't even really remember what the show is, but they were gonna show a live birth. And I was super excited about it. It was on regular TV and I begged my mom to let me watch it. It was up past my bedtime. And so I think it ended at 9 p.m. And so I got to stay up late. I don't think my brothers got to watch it, but I saw a vaginal birth when I was 12 years old. And I, you know, I kind of reference my Catholic school upbringing and that because when I watch that, it solidified for me in my 12 year old brain that I just saw the miracle of life. And seriously, I can't even explain to you, I still sort of get chills today how that changed me inside as a person. And I told my mom that day when I was 12 years old, I was going to do that when I grow up is I was going to help bring babies into the world and celebrate the miracle of life. And I was challenged a few times along the way of whether I would, you know, kind of sort of stick with that because I had a couple other interests. I, I I had a love for special ed. liked, I loved Little House on the Prairie and loved reading about blind children and deaf children and learning sign language and those kinds of things. And, you know, I sort of threw that around a few times, but really by the time I got to high school, I was pretty solidified in what I was gonna do was be a labor and delivery nurse. I threw around being an OB-GYN doctor. but I always knew from a very early age as well, I wanted to be a mom. And I just felt like for me, I could be a nurse, I could work very part time, could still raise my own kids, and I could still see this miracle life every day. And I tell my children to this day, even if I won the lottery and I made a bazillion million dollars, I would still be supplemental at Sacred Heart because I could not imagine. going through the rest of my life without being a part of birth. So. Wow. And it is a miracle. that's what, you know what mean? I tell them. write an essay about that exact thing when I got into nursing school. So they liked my essay. I just say it got me in. mean, describing that feeling that you see when you're a little kid and taking that forward. And I didn't keep the essay. I probably should have. But back then, remember, it was on a typewriter. It wasn't on a computer. Not easy access to the copy machines. You have to use the, what were those called? The mimeographs or whatever they were where you kind of, remember the purple drum? You cover it in ink and then you roll it and you'd make copies that way. I remember that in elementary school. mean, we're in little, yeah, very messy. No, and that's just, that's inspiring. And I love people's answers to that question. Cause you get some that are less, you know, meaningful. But every last person to a person is like, I made the right choice. This is where I ended up. This is where I was supposed to be. is, you know, whatever, fill in the blank. And that's just so incredible to me that at 12 years old, you have that moment, one moment that you see on television and you're like, that's it. That's what I want to do. That's what I want to do. And solidified for you. Our youngest daughter, was probably about that age right around there. I what it was, but there was a giraffe being born. Yes, I remember that. Yes. And so, you my wife was like, my daughter was out near my wife and my wife was like, oh, Ava, do you want to see? So Ava watched. And then at first she was kind of like shocked and trying to figure out what's going on. But at that point, and then, but for her in that moment, now, you know, after that point, she then ended up, her twins were giving delivery. At one point she had a sign on her door and she said, do not enter. T-Rex in labor or T-Rex giving birth or something like that. She like looked at all these animal birthing videos. She was still young enough that we were like, let's maybe not open that other box just yet to the human side of things. But, and she just loved it. So who knows where that may, if it takes her. But enough about families, enough about my stories, enough about names and Catholicism and all the things. We're gonna put a pin in it right here. This is the first episode that majority of it was just getting to know the background of Stella. But jump right back into episode two. If you're binging it, if not, I hope you catch this on your return trip from work or your trip to work if you listen to this on the flip side. And I'm excited for Stella to share her heart. There are a couple of huge reasons why she is on this podcast and why I'm so grateful that she is. So, Stella, you ready to make the flip to the other side? I mean, I am. And to show our age, we're going from the A side to the B side. Let's flip to B side.