Mary Ann West was working at Lakeview Hospital in 2001, when she helped a mom to deliver a little girl named Kelsey. Twenty-two years later, that baby girl grew up to marry a boy named Tyler — Mary Ann’s son.
Tyler and Kelsey were looking at Kelsey’s baby photos together when they noticed something incredible. “Hey, I think that’s my mom,” Tyler said. “It looks like she was your nurse!”
Not only that, but Mary Ann was the nurse who took Kelsey’s footprints for her birth certificate.
“We were both pretty shocked,” Tyler told the Washington Post. The couple then looked at Kelsey’s birth certificate, where Tyler said it was his mother’s handwriting.
When they looked at Kelsey’s birth video, they were able to spot Mary Ann standing next to Kelsey’s mother, Stacy, as she held her new baby.
“I thought it was really cool — it made me feel grateful to know I had this tie to my new family,” Kelsey said. “I always wanted to have a good relationship with my future parents, and it also confirmed that I want to be with Tyler for the rest of my life.”
The two sets of parents met at a pre-wedding dinner, where Stacy thought Mary Ann looked familiar. “Kelsey had told me that Mary Ann was a labor and delivery nurse, and she and Tyler had joked that maybe she’d brought me ice chips when I was in the hospital,” Stacy said. “I thought the odds were slim that she’d have been there. But in the back of my mind, I guess I wondered, ‘Could it be?’”
Stacy further said that Mary Ann stood out as her favorite labor and delivery nurse — so much so, that she included her picture in Kelsey’s baby book. “She was with me the entire time, telling me, ‘Honey, it’s going to be okay,’” Stacy said. “When Kelsey was born, she handed her to me and said, ‘Welcome to the world, princess.’ I just always remembered her kindness.”
In a Good Morning America video, Kelsey and Mary Ann sat together as they discussed the incredible connection they now share.
“Twenty-two years ago, almost to the day, I had this cute couple in labor,” Mary Ann recalled. “I remember she was really nervous because she was having her third baby, three under three, saying, ‘I’m not ready for a third, and I don’t know how the first two are going to handle this.’ And I had just given birth to my third a year ago, and was just letting her know, ‘You got this, girl. It’s fine.’ It was a great experience. They were just a cute couple, we got along really well.”
Mary Ann then explained that the third baby she was talking about was her son Tyler, who became Kelsey’s husband.
“When I was talking to Stacy and explained to her that I just had my third baby, and I’m a working mom, and… that was Tyler!” she said. “The baby I had just delivered, my third baby. So that’s the baby that she grew up to marry.”
Kelsey joked, “I like to think I heard that, and then just took it, and ran with it, and found him.”
Mary Ann responded, “I love it! You heard it in utero.”
