Ingeborg Nesbitt, for whom the Frederiksted Health Care clinic is named, was a midwife – among many different nursing titles. Simply put, Nesbitt helped women bring their babies into the world.
And according to Masserae Sprauve-Webster, chief executive officer of Frederiksted Health Care, many Crucians still living were born in that very building when it was a hospital and women used to birth there, many years ago.
One week ago – on May 1, after what Sprauve-Webster guessed was at least 30 years – had a woman give birth again inside its walls. The clinic birth wasn’t a planned affair by any means, though, and that’s one thing Sprauve-Webster wanted everyone in the community to know as news of the delivery travels.
“It was not intentional,” she said. “It was an emergency situation. We don’t want people to think they can just come down here and do that.”
“It’s not a service we’re providing here at the health center,” she said. “Fortunately this one was not with complications.”
What happened was a patient near the end of her pregnancy came in for a scheduled visit (the clinic provides prenatal care), and when the chief medical officer and OBGYN doctor on staff – Shavell Karel – examined the patient, she immediately saw the patient to be completely dilated. An ambulance was called, but before it arrived Karel sensed the inevitable was coming.
“Besides calling the ambulance she (Karel) was saying ‘Get this and get that because I don’t think we’re going to make it,’” Sprauve-Webster said.
Karel and some nurses gathered the necessary supplies, moved the woman to an exam room and delivered what Sprauve-Webster said was “a beautiful baby boy.”
Both mother and baby were transported to the Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital upon the ambulance’s arrival and have since been released.
Sprauve-Webster said both are “doing well,” and that her reason for sharing the story was twofold. “I’m also just proud of our staff and the confidence and competence they showed,” she said. And that during this national nurse appreciation week, it also means there is one more Crucian living amongst our midst who can say he was born in the very building so named for the famous Virgin Island nurse, Ingeborg Nesbitt.
History in the making indeed.
