If you ask Special Care Nursery nurse and midwife Lynda Kerr what has kept her coming back to work for the past 50 years, she’ll tell you it’s simple: “All babies are special.”
Lynda, who retires on Wednesday, has spent five decades caring for the region’s tiniest and most vulnerable patients, often in one of the most high-pressure, emotionally charged environments in healthcare.
Her career has been far more than cuddling babies, catching newborns or soothing anxious parents.
It has been a life’s work built on skill, compassion and unwavering commitment to care.
Born in Clermont, Lynda always knew she wanted to care for others. After completing school in Mackay, she boarded a plane for the very first time at just 17 to begin three years of hospital-based nursing training at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital.
It was 1 March 1976 and she still remembers the excitement and nerves of that first big step.
After graduating, she returned home to nurse in Clermont for 18 months. The high number of birthing mothers in the small rural community sparked a desire to deepen her knowledge, leading her to undertake 12 months of midwifery training in Rockhampton.
From there she gathered experience and stories across Queensland, working six months in Theodore, taking time to travel overseas and then spending two years in Gayndah.
It was July 1986 when she arrived at Mackay Base Hospital’s maternity unit and found the place she would call home for four remarkable decades.
Over 40 years working in the labour ward and Special Care Nursery (SCN), Lynda estimates she has helped deliver between nearly 1000 babies. Each one has left an imprint.
The last five years have been spent working just in the Special Care Nursery, where families facing some of the most frightening moments of their lives have found gentle reassurance in her confidence and care.
Even after 50 years, much about nursing and birthing remains the same.
“There are still older mums and young mums; married and unwed mums and families both large and small,” she said.
The gender reveal trend had certainly become more prominent and this reduced some of the surprise element at births, she said.
Technology had also changed greatly throughout her career.
Fortunately, bubble CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), a non-invasive respiratory support method for newborns with respiratory distress, meant there was less need to ventilate small babies today and warming water beds quickly helped regulate the temperature of tiny premmies.
Lynda recalls the first birth she attended as a student midwife in Rockhampton (“it was terrifying as it was the daughter of another midwife”), but she maintains that every birth she has attended since then has also delivered her as much joy.
Training the next generation of midwives and neonatal nurses had also been immensely satisfying and rewarding.
“I’ve always believed in treating everybody well and in teaching them as much as you can,” Lynda said.
“I’ve seen a lot of student nurses and midwives come through the ranks and go on to achieve great things, including management here,” Lynda said.
A good neonatal nurse needed to be skilled, confident and empathetic, she said, as being the parent of a sick or premature baby could be terrifying.
Last year alone the Mackay Base Hospital team cared for more than 350 premature and unwell newborns, some staying in SCN only a few days and others for months. Through it all, Lynda has been one of the steady hands and warm smiles guiding families through uncertainty.
As she prepares to retire, Lynda said she has always felt the same enthusiasm for maternal and child health that she had as a teenager stepping into her first hospital ward.
It might be her last shift in the Special Care Nursery this week, but the caring won’t stop. She’s looking forward to fostering dogs in her retirement, spending more time with her 92-year-old mother and perhaps, some more travelling.
“It’s been a privilege and very rewarding to play a part in what is often the most important day of people’s lives when their baby is born and when they finally get to go home,” she said.
“Where there’s life, there’s always hope. I think all babies are very special.”