HYDE PARK — The University of Chicago is welcoming back midwives and a renewed focus on natural childbirth.
On Monday, the Comer Children’s Hospital opened a new 25,000-square-foot Family Birth Center that by design has doctors and midwives working hand-in-hand.
Dr. Kenneth Nunes, section chief of general obstetrics and gynecology, said Monday that after the hospital got rid of its midwife practice in 2003, it developed a reputation for focusing on the most difficult patients. Over the past 10 years, the hospital lost patients in Hyde Park and across the South Side who otherwise would have had their children at the university, but thought the university only treated complicated pregnancies, Nunes said.
“I think we needed to catch up on a number of things, and I think we have,” Nunes said.
The new space in Comer, 5721 S. Maryland Ave., is designed with the midwives’ methods in mind.
“People are calling it ‘midwifery toys’ — and we have a whole toy closet,” said Erin Irwin, the hospital's new head midwife, pulling out a large peanut-shaped ball.
She said it’s more than just the “peanut ball,” one of many inflatable balls that women can use during labor.
The hallways of the new labor and delivery center are specifically designed like a running track, because women often need to walk during labor. This allows them to do so without having to leave the center. Two of the rooms also have large tubs that can be filled with warm or cool water to help alleviate birthing pains.
Nunes said the hospital is not doing water births because the research still shows it's too high-risk, but said the research — and patient’s outcomes — are showing that having midwives on staff makes childbirth easier and safer.
The midwives’ practice shares the same office with the doctors, and Nunes said the culture is changing rapidly at the hospital. Doctors are now more eager to call in a midwife when a woman needs help with labor.
Nunes and Irwin said midwifery practices are now built into the system and broadly accepted in many major academic hospitals.
Irwin said she often has to explain to women who come in with a birth plan that many of things they want, like to breastfeed the baby within the first hour after birth or sleep with the baby in the room, are now the default.
Epidurals and cesarean deliveries are still practice at the center, but the methods have been changed to make it easier for new parents. Pain medication is now out of sight in a cabinet for women who don't want to consider it, and anesthesiologists work exclusively in the center to make sure women have enough feeling to be able to change their position easily at their midwife’s urging.
Nunes said the two new operating rooms have special see-through curtains and video screens for parents who do want to watch as a doctor is delivering a child through a cesarean section.
There are currently three midwives at the hospital, with two more planned to be hired by December, according to Irwin.
Nunes said the hospital delivered approximately 2,100 babies last year and hopes to deliver 2,500 this year. He said the program may expand to eight midwives in the coming years.
Midwives came in to help rebuild the program a year ago and their practice is now built into the physical building — and also the lives of the practitioners.
Nunes said his child was born with the assistance of a midwife, as were the kids of his boss, Dr. Ernst Lengyel, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology.
For Irwin, it helps validate nearly 20 years as a midwife. She said when she first graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago, only three hospitals in the city were willing to work with midwives and there were no options in the suburbs.
“In the last decade, obstetrics has really swung hard towards listening to women,” Irwin said.
Nunes said South Side families are gaining interest in midwife services and the birthing center has been full since it opened on Monday.
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