Coast Guard Vet Becomes NICU Nurse at the Hospital That Saved His Son

Image source: TODAY

A former U.S. Coast Guard member who said he had “no interest at all in nursing whatsoever” now works overnight NICU shifts alongside some of the nurses who cared for his newborn son, according to TODAY.

Nathan Schloegl, a Grand Rapids, Michigan dad whose son Luca spent six days on respiratory support shortly after birth, told TODAY’s Sheinelle Jones that he enrolled in community college within weeks of Luca’s discharge. He graduated from nursing school in December 2025 and now works overnight shifts in the NICU at Corewell Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, the same unit where his son was treated.

Three years later, Luca is a healthy toddler, and his dad is the nurse on the other side of the isolette.

Schloegl spent years in the Coast Guard before moving into private security work. Nursing was never on his radar.

That changed in December 2022, when Luca was born and needed respiratory support. According to Grand Rapids station FOX 17, Luca was diagnosed with respiratory distress syndrome and admitted to the Helen DeVos NICU after a planned C-section at 38 weeks.

Schloegl told TODAY that he “really honestly didn’t know what NICU was” when his son was admitted. “I had this really irrational fear that he was going to get mixed up or lost,” he said.

A bedside nurse named Sarah Sund walked the family through it. “She kept it so simple for me,” Schloegl said.

Luca spent six days in the unit before going home. By the second week of January 2023, Schloegl had enrolled in community college to start a nursing program. He job-shadowed Sund and other Helen DeVos staff while finishing his degree through the Grand Valley State University nursing program.

“I just went all in,” he told TODAY. “That experience was enough for me to see the impact that nurses make.”

He graduated in December 2025 and was hired into the same NICU that treated his son. This week marked his first National Nurses Week as a nurse rather than as a parent in the waiting area.

Schloegl, whose arms are covered in tattoos, said his look catches some families off guard, and he thinks it actually helps. He told TODAY he connects with NICU dads “just because we’re able to connect on a guy-to-guy level.”

“The best part for me is being able to connect with those parents and try to give back what was given to me in that moment,” Schloegl said.

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Schloegl’s story will get its share of Nurses Week shares, but the underlying point is operational. NICUs run on quick, plain-language communication with terrified parents. A new graduate who has stood on the parent side of the isolette for six days brings a perspective that’s difficult to teach in clinical rotations.

It also speaks to a quieter gap in neonatal nursing: male caregivers, and the dads they care for, who often feel out of place in units where the bedside team skews heavily female. Schloegl specifically credits his unexpected background, including the Coast Guard service, private security work, and visible tattoos, with helping him reach fathers who don’t always know how to ask questions in the unit.

For nurse managers and preceptors, his hire is a useful data point on non-traditional pipelines. Career-changers with lived NICU experience can be a strong fit for the work, and second-degree students entering nursing after 30 are an increasingly common part of the workforce. For staff nurses, it’s a reminder that the dad pacing the hallway at 3 a.m. may be back in scrubs a few years later.

🤔 NICU nurses: have you ever cared for a family whose parent later returned as a coworker? Tell us in the comments below.