Andrea Blizzard, RN, MSN, never thought she would end up working in the same type of unit where she began her life, but today she says she can’t imagine being anywhere else.
Blizzard is a nurse at the UAB Women & Infants Center’s Continuing Care Nursery (CCN), which is the step-down unit for the UAB Regional Newborn Intensive Care Unit (RNICU). The CCN provides specialized, family-centered care for premature babies, as Blizzard once was.
Premature birth
Blizzard was born in New York City roughly two months before her due date, weighing just three pounds and six ounces.
“My mom went into preterm labor while she was on her lunch break and just decided to walk across the street to see the doctor,” Blizzard said. “She was not expecting to have me then, but the delivery was pretty fast. It happened so quickly that my grandmother and my dad couldn’t make it – it was just my mom and the doctor.”
Thankfully, Blizzard didn’t have any serious complications at birth; she was just small and needed to eat and grow.
“I was on phototherapy and things like that,” Blizzard said. “I have a picture of me actually in an isolette, which is weird in my mind to see myself in an incubator like I work with now.”
She stayed in that hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for two months, under the watchful eye of its nurses. Years later, Blizzard’s mother told her that she was anxious about her size and all the cords she was hooked up to, adding that the guidance of a nurse helped her overcome her fears.
“My mom went to the hospital every day to visit and feed me,” Blizzard said. “She was really nervous to touch me and hold me, but there was a nurse who would always tell her, ‘This is your baby – she’s small, but she’s yours.’ It took time for my mom to get comfortable with it, but she had help.”
Stepping into nursing
Her mom moved to Alabama when Blizzard was five years old. By the time she was in high school, she knew she wanted to be a nurse – just not what kind. That changed after her first “clinical” at the UAB CCN. Clinicals are supervised training rounds for nursing students that give them hands-on patient care experience in a hospital setting.
“There was just something about being there with the babies, seeing all the things that my mom had talked about for the first time. I just felt a connection,” Blizzard said.
She completed UAB’s Accelerated Master’s in Nursing Pathway (AMNP), an entry-level program for people with non-nursing degrees who want to make a career change to nursing, and joined the CCN in January 2024.
“What led me to UAB was the atmosphere,” Blizzard said. “The culture on my unit is something that I don’t think I could find anywhere else. When I went to that clinical, the nurse I was with made me want to work here. I could tell that she genuinely loved her job, and the way she explained things to me and let me do things – just making me feel included as a student – made me want to be a nurse here.”
Caring for the next generation
Since joining the CCN, Blizzard has learned about the numerous sacrifices nurses make – and the impact they can have on patients.
“Knowing that someone gave that care to me makes me feel like this is a way I can give back, by doing it for my babies,” Blizzard said. “It’s a full-circle moment for me.”
As she knows from her own family, being a neonatal nurse is also about caring for the parents, so Blizzard shares her experience with them.
“It can be intimidating for parents looking at a little bitty baby, not really certain of what life will look like,” Blizzard said. “Part of what you have to do is learn how to talk to parents and how to be there for them in some scary times. It goes a long way to not just take care of their baby but also to be like an advocate for them. I always tell parents, especially when they first come down and if they’re nervous, that I was once like their baby and look at me now, I’m thriving. Parents are always so shocked when I say it, and their faces light up. It also gives me something to talk about and connect with them about.”
“I get a lot of satisfaction from my job,” Blizzard continued. “It’s a lot of happy days, and every little thing for the babies is a big milestone. I think anybody who wants to become a neonatal nurse, if they have the heart for it, should definitely do it. It’s probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
November is Prematurity Awareness Month. Learn more about the Regional Newborn Intensive Care Unit and Continuing Care Nursery at the UAB Women & Infants Center.