I am going to be honest here. I had a horrible experience with nurses at both Charlie or Olive's delivery.

For Charlie's birth, we truly had the world's meanest nurses. The triage nurses just didn't seem to care at all that Bee's labor was progressing extremely quickly and that she was in tremendous pain. They just kept saying that all the anesthesiologists were busy and that she would have to wait. Then they outright avoided me for what seemed like hours.

Bee was in so much pain and the nurses were so unhelpful that I started roaming the halls looking for someone else to beg for help. I ran into a random resident walking down the hall and just outright begged him to help my laboring wife. He took pity on me and found us an anesthesiologist and sent him to our room to talk to us. I have never been so grateful in my life! He was truly the only person who listened to me, because to be honest I begged almost every medical professional I ran into for help. The next day, I found the resident and told him exactly how much what he had done had meant to me and Bee. My only regret is that I didn't write him a letter, to put my gratitude into writing. Later we found out that the day of Charlie's birth, the hospital was overflowing with laboring moms and that's why the experience had been so difficult.

Still, as bad as our experience was with the entire triage nurse department, our experience with the labor nurse for Charlie's birth was even worse. The labor nurse seemed to me to mock our desire to try for a vaginal birth, since she was seemed convinced Bee needed a c-section. I really grew to dislike her, and was so glad when she went off shift.

When Bee got pregnant again, I really wanted to switch hospitals... but we didn't have a lot of choices since we had a higher-risk pregnancy. Thankfully though, when Olive was born we didn't have to deal as much with the triage nurses and in fact the initial nurses we had really encouraged Bee to try a VBAC. I was so grateful for that kindness, after the horrible experience we had with nurses the first time around.

Our labor nurse for Olive's birth was nice enough, but not that confident or helpful. Still, at least she wasn't outright mean. Do you know what blew me away about Bee's birth experience with Olive — and actually, with Charlie too? To me, the kindest and most caring medical professionals during both birth experiences were... the doctors. You often hear about how nurses are so empathetic and caring, and the doctors can be distant and kind of mean. But that was the exact opposite of our experience. Our doctors were such cheerleaders for Bee, and so warm and emotional. I was truly blown away. Bee had two doctors during Olive's birth, and one of them was such a huge help that I will remember her kindness for the rest of my life.

I would never in a million years guessed that both of our birth experiences would follow the same template: kind and helpful doctors, assisted by distant and not-so-helpful nurses. They say that births are full of surprises though, and this definitely ranked up there as one of the biggest.

Did you have a positive experience with your labor nurses? How would you rate your experience with your nurses versus your doctors?