Samuel’s birth mother could not afford to stay at the hospital and away from her other two boys, so right after he received the Berlin heart she left. Samuel had no one there to advocate for him, pray for him, bond with him. Sure, he had caring nurses, well mostly, but it is just not the same as the love and commitment of parents. Samuel was bottle-fed up until shortly after his third major stroke in late April of 2021. It was about this time that I was rolling out a first in the nation registered RN Apprenticeship in Ambulatory Women’s Health for Pregnancy Help Medical Clinics. I created this with the help of Rachel Owen, who was ED at that time of Informed Choices Medical Clinics in Iowa. I wrote a $250k grant under the CARES Act to create this Super Nurse apprenticeship to help pregnancy centers recruit and train nurses at the highest level of their licensure to work in pregnancy help medical clinics. These nurses not only received a certificate of completion from the US Department of Labor, but they also became certified in Limited OB Ultrasound, Sexual Risk Avoidance Strategies Certification from Ascend, STD Testing, Treatment and Prevention, Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), Abortion Pill Reversal for Medical Providers, Sex Trafficking Awareness for Medical Providers, Fertility Education and Medical Management Teacher Certification (FEMM), Adoption and Modern Adoption Counseling for Nurses, as well as training in social services and supports for nurses to competently assist patients enrolling in SNAP, Medicaid and Childcare Assistance Benefits. I was asked to come to Florida and write a grant there for nearly a half a million dollars to roll out to pregnancy centers across the state; and it was awarded. This was how I came to be in a conversation with a nurse working in a clinic run by Catholic Charities in the Jacksonville area. I asked her a pretty simple question, “tell me about some of the adoption work you are doing”. To which she proceeded to tell me three stories, and the third was about this baby whose mother abandoned him at the hospital at 2 weeks of age and that he could not receive his heart transplant without an adoptive family. The hospital had not ever reached out to Catholic Charities to assist them before. They usually place children in the state medical foster system. In Samuel’s case, however, he would be immunocompromised after receiving a transplant and could not be around other small children; and the three strokes at that point indicated he would need developmental assistance too. They wanted a family that lived within one hour of Shands in Gainesville, and that were not looking for their first child, and that were not intimidated by all of the medical needs. That was a tall order! continued on page 52... ...”Love” from page 49 WWW.PRO.LIFE | 1 (800) 858-3040 | 919 S. MAIN ST, SNOWFLAKE, AZ 85937 50
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