When Brittany O'Rourke checked in to the Magee-Womens Hospital neonatal intensive care unit for her first day of a college internship two years ago, she got an unexpected welcome.

"Brittany O'Rourke?" said a veteran nurse sitting at the nursing station. "Unit B, back corner, by the X-ray machine. I took care of you so many times."

As a patient more than two decades before, Ms. O'Rourke spent three months in the Magee NICU, fighting for her life after being born at 28 weeks gestation and weighing just 2 1/2 pounds.

Now, as a nurse, she spends 12-hour shifts caring for babies just like her former self -- feeding them miniature bottles, changing wallet-sized diapers and deftly bathing them through portholes in their plastic incubators.

Several of the nurses who took care of her as a baby now serve as mentors, occasionally teasing the 23-year-old Ms. O'Rourke about her baby temper tantrums that they remarkably still remember.

On a recent Monday, Ms. O'Rourke cared for month-old Dy'Nasti Woods, born weighing 3 pounds at 29 weeks gestation.

She held Dy'Nasti's hand as she changed her diaper and gave Dy'Nasti her first vial-sized bottle fortified with vitamins, cupping her chin in her hand as she coaxed out a muted burp.

"At first I was so nervous," she said. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh, these babies are so tiny.' "

Now, she expertly juggles five babies in the course of her shift, moving from bedside to bedside as she feeds them, changes diapers and checks vital signs. She often pauses when she sees a 2-pound baby born at 28 weeks, thinking of herself at that age.

Like other NICU nurses, in addition to caring for the babies, Ms. O'Rourke comforts nervous parents by teaching them how to change diapers, feed bottles and sometimes even how to hold their unexpectedly early arrivals.

But unlike other NICU nurses, she also reassures them by happily serving as a walking poster child for the possibilities after prematurity.

"She's just able to offer families a better perspective because of what she has been through," said Lynn Cimino, a unit director in the Magee NICU. "Families see how well she has done and what her road has been. It gives them a lot of hope."

When Ms. O'Rourke speaks to parents, her permanently raspy voice and scarred throat hint at a rather eventful medical history. As a baby, she couldn't fully wean off of a ventilator -- the result of a weak and narrow airway.

After three months in the NICU at Magee, Ms. O'Rourke spent a month in the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh NICU. From then until she was 8 years old, she spent much of her time in and out of hospitals for reconstructive airway surgeries, even requiring homeschooling for part of first and second grades because of a tracheostomy tube.

Ms. O'Rourke was such a fixture in hospitals as a child that nurses would give her tasks such as pressing a button to send samples up to labs or writing on medical charts.

Her father remembers her at age 3 playing in the hospital wearing her gown and attached to an oxygen tank. When he asked her for something she replied, "Not now Daddy. I've got to make my rounds with the nurses."

"I definitely felt like hospitals were my second home," she said -- a feeling that helped push her into a career in nursing.

From the time she was 8 until college, Ms. O'Rourke was relatively free of medical complications. She was known at Seton-LaSalle High School as the girl who wore chunky necklaces (to hide her scar), but was able to play sports and graduate on the honor roll.

During her original nursing school internship in Magee's medical/surgical unit, however, she had trouble keeping up physically with the demands of rushing from room to room.

Her mother, Gina, who is a nurse at the pediatric intensive care unit at Children's Hospital, suggested that she try the NICU, where the babies are positioned close together.

She found her dream job in the NICU -- continuing to work there even after the conclusion of her internship in 2007 -- but she started to feel increasingly tired, stressed and irritable during her senior year at Carlow University. A visit to the doctor showed that Ms. O'Rourke was straining to breathe because she had outgrown her infant-sized reconstructed airway.

To get an adult-sized airway, Ms. O'Rourke underwent major surgery in February. She now feels much stronger and more energetic, realizing how limited her "normal" once was.

And for the first time, she's starting to use her real vocal cords, though she laughs that she'll never be an opera singer.

She's healthy enough that she'd probably be able to work in areas of the hospital other than the NICU. But now, though she might want to take some time off to travel or to go back to school, she never wants to leave the place where she was literally born.

"No matter what I do," she said, "I always want to stay here."

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