Cindy Godby, RN

By Cindy Godby, RN
Clinical Team Manager
Bethesda Center for Reproductive Health and Fertility

I became a nurse in June 1981.  Throughout my professional nursing career, I have always worked in women’s healthcare areas.  As a new graduate nurse working in a Level II nursery, I was involved with parents “experiencing” a perinatal loss.  I was with them as they were told about the loss, when they were with their baby as it was dying, and when they held their deceased baby.  My involvement in this process reinforced to me that nursing was not only using your assessment skills to plan and execute care efficiently -- but also the very important aspect of helping patients adjust to the emotional aspect of working through a perinatal loss.

Following my Level II nursery experience, I developed a program for Perinatal Home Care for patients being discharged less than 48 hours after a “normal” vaginal delivery.  This experience allowed me to redefine “normal” and opened my eyes to each patient’s needs in their setting rather than meeting our needs in a hospital setting.  Each patient’s needs became very individualized.

I have also worked as an Infection Control Coordinator mostly in the Perinatal setting.  The epidemiology skills I learned with this position taught me to assess every situation fully in all areas.  I look at every patient’s situation and every chart in this manner.  Histories, lab values, and treatment plans all are relevant.

In September 2001, I joined the Bethesda Center for Reproductive Health and Fertility as the IVF Coordinator. My role also includes coordinating all of the PGD cases.  In the last few years, my role as the Clinical Team Manager has been expanded to focus more on management than patient care. I would like to be able to fit more hands-on patient care into my day. 

The technical aspect of reproductive nursing fed my need to understand the anatomy and physiology of various diagnoses. And of course, genetics has always been important, but it is becoming even more important in this field.  My intellectual needs continue to be stimulated in this way.

Initially, I had a difficult time realizing the goal of getting pregnant was not met for each patient/couple with each cycle or treatment plan.  I questioned myself as to how I could work in an area where “success” was only reached 50% of the time.  I truly struggled with this.  Then I realized I needed to get back to my origins of my nursing career.  Each patient/couple needed to be assessed individually.  Encouragement was given in the direction the patient led you.  If a cycle did not result in a pregnancy, I needed to equate it as a perinatal loss.  This loss needed to become real to the patients.  I needed to let the patient/couples experience the loss in their own way whether through listening to them, letting them cry, encouraging their anger, or even sometimes letting them see their goal of having a biological child of their own dissolve and helping them through that journey at their own “need” level.

So, for me a wonderful aspect of what I do in my role is working with patients based on their needs.  Ideally, this includes celebrating the pregnancies and births with them.  But I look at the times I have shared grief and loss with our patients during their journey as the most important aspect of my nursing role in this field.  And some days, like today, you share tears of happiness in celebrating a pregnancy with the same patients you have cried with in times of grief in the past.  How can you not celebrate this role of nursing?