The Family Maternity Center of the Northern Neck opens this week after years of effort. View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

After years of labor, a birth center is born

Maternity center opens in Lancaster County, serves Northern Neck

BY FRANK DELANO

Date published: 5/30/2010

BY FRANK DELANO

The ribbon-cutting yesterday for a new maternity center in Lancaster County comes just in time for a pregnant Northern Neck lady whose baby is destined to be the center's firstborn.

"She's due June 15, plus or minus 14 days," said Jessica Jordan, the certified nurse midwife who will manage the $2 million Family Maternity Center of the Northern Neck.

The first birth will occur in one of two homey delivery rooms complete with birthing tubs. The mother has participated in weeks of prenatal care, including group meetings with about 20 other expectant moms, Jordan said.

About half of them will deliver babies at the center in coming months, Jordan said. The other half will deliver in hospitals "because some of them are high-risk pregnancies and others just prefer hospitals," she said.

Jordan said she expects 25 babies to be born in the imposing 9,765-square-foot, two-story building now surrounded by a field of barley. In three years, 100 babies may be born each year at the birthing center, she said.

The center is connected by high-speed Internet to doctors at VCU Health Systems. The hook-up will allow the Richmond doctors to have video conferences with Northern Neck patients and to view real-time ultrasonic exams. The center will also provide pediatric care managed by a nurse practitioner.

The new center took six years to be born.

"I never thought I'd see it," said Dr. James Hamilton, an obstetrician who delivered many of the 250 babies that were once born each year at Rappahannock General Hospital in Kilmarnock. Hamilton is medical director of the new center.

Citing high insurance costs, RGH closed its labor and delivery rooms in 2004, forcing pregnant Northern Neck moms to drive an hour or more to delivery rooms in Richmond, Fredericksburg or Hampton Roads.

The closing of obstetrical units at Kilmarnock and other small-town hospitals prompted Del. Albert Pollard, D-Lancaster, to seek a state pilot program to test the birthing-center model in rural communities. The Northern Neck center received $150,000 to develop its plans.

Date published: 5/30/2010

Most recent reader comments: