Nurse delivers babies for 50 years

After delivering Oklahoma babies for 50 years a local nurse is nearing her retirement.

Thursday, August 28th 2008, 8:34 pm

By: News 9


By Melissa Maynarich, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- After delivering Oklahoma babies for 50 years, a local nurse is nearing her retirement.

Madalene Smith's colleagues said it's hard not to have a good day when you're working her.

In hospitals around Oklahoma, hundreds of babies are born each day, and since the year 1958, the Mercy nurse has been helping bring thousands of those little boys and girls into the world.

It's a career Smith believes God meant her to have, since she just happened into it, when visiting her Uncle with cancer in the hospital years ago.

"One of the nuns was out in the hall and she said, ‘Oh my niece is a nurse,'" Smith said. "She was real proud of that, and she said, ‘You want to come to work?'"

Smith told the nun that she would be a nurse, and got the opportunity that night when the nun asked her to work that weekend.

Smith works quickly, but calmly, easing new mothers into a new era of their lives.

"I'm high spirited," new mother Amy Macharia said. "She lifted my spirits."

Many patients and coworkers said Smith is tirelessly working to keep the mothers' experiences positive.

"I think she's great," patient Amy Graves said. "She's wonderful."

Her enthusiasm for the job has endured through the raising of 10 of her own children, and 31 grandchildren, not to mention generations of new technology.

"She cares about every baby and she cares about every mother," Mercy nurse Sharon Cornell said. "She really does and she gives her very best to every single one."

Smith doesn't have a retirement date yet, but she thinks it's coming up soon.

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