Doctor with newborn baby
A Labor + Delivery Do-Over
Name Claire Williamson
Delivery Date 02/26/2013
Claire Williamson, 35, gave birth to her second child at The Mother Baby Center, a partnership between Allina Health and Children’s Minnesota, when the paint on the walls was still fresh. Shortly after the center opened its doors to the public in 2013, Williamson, a north Minneapolis native, was among the first to usher in new life at the gleaming space—a symbolic baptism of sorts. Natural light streamed through high-glass windows; vivid flowers in bloom wallpapered the corridors. Her midwife came charging toward her with arms outstretched, directing her to an exclusive, untouched labor and delivery suite. “One of the things I didn’t realize until I made the switch from the hospital, where I had my first birth, to here was that the midwives labor with you,” she says. “They stay with you, and not just because something went wrong. Even the nurses! I remember one nurse being so excited for me that I was dilated to a seven. She said, ‘You don’t look like you’re having any stress!’ And that just stayed with me … it made me feel really good.” These combined interactions, mixed with the all-hands-on-deck care, left such an indelible imprint on Williamson that she went on to deliver her third baby—and now her fourth, due this spring—at The Mother Baby Center.
doctor's waiting room
From Push to Pool
Name Caitlin Kapurch
Delivery Date 02/01/2021
As someone who specializes in obstetric anesthesiology, Caitlin Kapurch, 30, is no stranger to the fact that deliveries can go seamlessly or sideways—and fast. For her own birth, she sought out the high-quality hospital care she had become so acquainted with on a professional level, minus the unsettling beeps and rushed activity. “We wanted to have the reassurance that we had access to the highest-level NICU,” she says. After laboring for over 24 hours, Kapurch was immediately shown to the birthing tub upon her arrival, offered as a form of pain relief. Though she didn’t deliver in the tub, she said having it proposed to her at the height of her contractions made her feel like she had some semblance of control in a time when her body had other plans. Her malpositioned baby was eventually guided all the way through the pelvis. “My midwife, Carly, played tug-of-war with me, where we pulled on opposite directions of a sheet for two full hours as I pushed,” she recalls with a laugh. “She had her sleeves rolled up, sweating right alongside me.”
Normalizing the NICU Experience
Name Erin Peterson
Delivery Date 02/01/2020
When her high-risk pregnancy forced her to surrender her home birth plans, Erin Peterson, 30, was determined to find the next best thing. “The Mother Baby Center had the best arrangements in the Midwest to get our baby the immediate care he was going to need,” she says. She had learned that her son had a diaphragmatic hernia in utero, which would require surgery and an indeterminable number of days in the NICU upon birth. The virtual tour she and her husband took revealed sizable rooms that could accommodate a variety of birth plans—an amenity that would eventually become a necessity when Peterson’s water ruptured at 33 weeks, prompting a 10-day stay at the center. “The baby stayed inside while I stayed there, and we were so grateful we did!” she says. While she was hospitalized away from home, and awaiting the preterm birth of a sick baby, she says the staff eased her mind by attempting to normalize her situation as much as possible. “Had we been at home an hour and a half away, Micah wouldn’t have had the immediate intubation and other lifesaving measures he needed,” she says.
The Mother Baby Center is a partnership between Allina Health and Children's Minnesota and has locations in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Coon Rapids. themotherbabycenter.org
This article originally appeared in the May 2021 issue of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.
