NURSE MEETS WOMAN WHO FIRST HELD HER.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Jude Ord is back where she started 37 years ago - in the maternity ward at Simi Valley Hospital.

Working side by side once a week with Ethel Jones, the maternity nurse on duty the night Jude was born here, Sept. 1, 1965, shortly after the hospital opened its doors.

``I feel like I've come full circle,'' says Jude, the new obstetrics nurse, as she prepared to walk into the delivery room Friday morning to help bring another baby into the world.

It's the same delivery room Ethel Jones walked into 37 years ago to help doctors bring Jude into the world.

The same maternity ward where Ethel bundled up and rocked thousands of crying newborns over the years, including the one she was walking in to say hello to right now - the new obstetrics nurse on duty, Jude Ord.

When the last time you saw a place you were a few days old and wrapped in a blanket, nothing looks familiar. And so it was with Jude Ord.

She stood at the maternity room window a few days after being hired as a nurse this past June, trying to envision herself in one of those cribs 37 years earlier.

But was it the same window or even the same room? No one seemed to know for sure. One person told her the hospital wasn't even open at the time of her birth. It took a visitor to the hospital to provide the answer.

``I was in the hallway by the nursery, and an older man was walking by,'' Jude said. ``He stopped and said, 'Wow, is this nursery still here? I remember back in 1965 when everyone was lined up in front of this window. There wasn't another nursery in Simi Valley.'

``That's when I knew this was the exact nursery I stayed in as a newborn,'' she said.

Confident that not much had changed in 37 years, Jude went looking for someone who could tell her more about her first days of life, but there was no one still around to remember.

No one except a woman named Ethel Jones, who had retired as a maternity nurse after 25 years, but had been returning to the hospital one day a week as a volunteer in the maternity ward.

You can retire from the job, Ethel would say, but you can't walk away from all those babies needing someone to hold and comfort them.

Jude didn't know it, but she was about to get a surprise visit from the first person who held her as a baby - wrapped her up in a blanket and handed her to her mother.

``I was at the company picnic a few weeks after I started working, and a lady walked up to me and said, 'Hi, I'm Ethel Jones, and I think you need to talk to me.'''

The two women walked off alone, and Ethel told Jude everything she could remember about that first batch of babies born in her maternity ward during the first month the hospital opened in 1965.

``I told her I never thought I'd meet one of the original babies from back then,'' Ethel said Friday.

``It was so long ago. I would spend most of my shift holding them when they weren't feeding with their mothers. I spent a lot of time just fussing over them. ``And now I'm working with one of them, and that feels awfully good,'' she said, smiling.

It meant a lot, that meeting at the picnic, and being able to work with Ethel now, even if it's only one day a week, Jude says.

She didn't have a storybook life growing up after leaving the hospital with her parents 37 years ago, she said.

``My parents divorced two years after I was born, and I didn't see my dad for a long while, until we developed a relationship when I was 28, and I was having my own child,'' Jude said.

``My mom, I don't really know, so it meant so much to be able to say, 'I was here, and this lady held me.'

``I just went home that day and cried,'' Jude said.

And now she is smiling Friday because walking through the nursery doors is Ethel Jones, and she's asking, ``Where's my baby girl?''

Right over here, Jude Ord says.

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Photo:

Ethel Jones, left, a volunteer nurse for Simi Valley Hospital, stands beside maternity nurse Jude Ord, whom she held as a newborn 37 years ago.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News