Letter to the Editor
Obstetrics, Labor & Delivery
I was born in Hamilton Hospital, Olney, TX as were my siblings. My husband and his siblings were born in Hamilton Hospital. My three children were born in Hamilton Hospital, and three of my nine grandchildren were born in Hamilton Hospital.
My first child was a long labor, but I spent most of it at home. Living only about a mile from the hospital we didn’t get in a big hurry. The equipment available for monitoring the baby’s heart beat wouldn’t cooperate, and my blood pressure was high when I laid flat of my back. The OB nurse and I talked about what we could think of to try to reduce my blood pressure, the first attempt worked, the blood pressure went down when I was on my side. After what was actually about 9 hours of labor, We had a beautiful daughter.
My second child, the labor was about half that time, and our son was born.
But my third child….. At that time none of the doctors in Olney were delivering babies. It was my understanding that for some reason the premiums to cover maternity insurance had risen so high that the doctors had decided to stop delivering babies. The doctor who delivered my first two children recommended The Women’s Clinic in Wichita Falls 45 miles away. But what else could I do? A cousin sang their praises due to her complicated latein- life pregnancy. The procedure was that you saw each of the doctors during prenatal care so that when the baby came any one of them would know your case and could deliver.
In my 5th month, a young doctor came to town and would be delivering babies. I wasn’t sure he would take me on because of how far along I was. But he agreed. On my last prenatal visit, he had commented that “when this baby comes, it will come like a freight train.” Not encouraging, but I lived only a mile from the hospital.
Three weeks after the original due date, labor woke me at 6:20 a.m. I called my mother. Then called my doctor, who lived in Archer City and told him the “freight train was on its way.” The nurse who had been in obstetrics with the first two had refused to do any more babies. But the hospital didn’t have an obstetrics nurse on Wednesdays, every other day of the week they did. Because things were moving fast and the oncall obstetrics nurse lived in Throckmorton, they called in the experienced obstetrics nurse who lived in Olney, who had been with me the first two babies. My healthy third baby was born at 8:13!
There was no way the doctors at the Women’s Clinic or I would have imagined that the baby would come that quickly. And if that had been the case, would the doctors in Wichita Falls believed I was really in labor and been at the Wichita Falls hospital when I arrived? I shudder to think that my husband might have had to stop and deliver our baby on the side of the road on the way to Wichita Falls.
Olney has been so blessed to have a hospital in town for all these years. But if you take away obstetrics, labor and delivery, you take away the “beautiful” part of a hospital. I wonder how many times a nurse has gone to just look at the new babies for an uplift of their sprits after a trying patient, an inevitable death, or just sadness of being unable to cure “everyone”?
Susan Jeske Olney, Texas