Recommending Jordan Hospital to her friends will be easy, Stacia Parks says. When she had her daughter, Ayda Jayne, she was impressed that the labor and delivery area was very clean and nice. The staff at Jordan Hospital was helpful and friendly but when she talks about the BirthPlace nurses, you can hear the admiration in her voice. They made her feel safe and secure. They answered all her questions and met all her needs promptly and with an upbeat professionalism that stays with her more than a year following her daughter’s birth. Even as the whole staff welcomed her, she quickly made friends with Carol, one of her nurses.
Carol made everything seem easy. She anticipated Stacia needs and worked with her to teach her what she needed to know and help ease the anxiety of delivering. It helped that her mom, a Jordan Hospital nurse, was in attendance as well as Ayda’s father. Her grandmother was there too.
Stacia was not planning a family and was surprised to learn that she was pregnant. Not only was she pregnant, she was six and a half months pregnant, which makes for a very fast pregnancy. Not to be out done, her labor, while induced, only took about 30 minutes.
When Sarah (Whiting) Stearns and her husband Will toured the Jordan Hospital Birthplace months before the arrival of their first child, they barely gave a thought to the Operating Rooms and intensive care programs they were shown. After all, who expects to need such things? But when Sarah’s birth plan went askew with her own high blood pressure, a long, induced labor, her unborn child’s plummeting heart rate and finally, an emergency C-section, it all clicked for Sarah. “I didn’t consider it at all before, but when the time came they had to wheel me into that OR, I was very happy I’d been there and seen it.”
Jordan’s Birthplace not only provided Sarah and her family with the medical support they needed in that crisis, she said, they gave emotional support too. “They talked Will through the entire thing, and made him feel better. And for me, it was more after the birth. I mean, it’s one thing to take care of the physical issues, but to know how to keep ahead of emotional ones is quite another. I was a physical and emotional train wreck. And their nursing staff just knew. They knew when to come in to me in the middle of the night with a cool cloth and some comfort. It was incredible.”
Happily, little Maddie is now a thriving four-year old. How happy were the Stearns with their local care in their time of crisis? The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. In 2007 their second daughter was born at the Birthplace. And while this time Sarah was ready for even the most stressful of times, all went smoothly. “I trusted Jordan’s Birthplace, and I was right,” said Sarah. “They are smart, amazing and caring. I absolutely knew to go back there again.”
If the traffic copters were watching the South Shore on the 28th of January in 2006, they may have reported a strange phenomenon: cars snaked way back on Sandwich Street, all heading directly to Jordan Hospital’s BirthPlace.
That was by design. Because when Melanie Snyder chose where to have her first child, Ellie, she knew it would have to be a place her many, many local relatives could get to, and get to quickly. “Everyone was so excited for her to be born,” she said. True to form, when word went out that Ellie was born (the first girl in that generation of the family) everyone literally dropped what they were doing and dashed to meet their new family member. “I know I had at least 18 family visitors in those first few hours,” said Melanie.
And although Melanie first thought of the Birthplace for the sake of her large and close family, once she experienced it, she knew there were many more reasons. “I’m a hair dresser and I tell my clients all the time: you don’t need to go far away,” she said. Melanie remembers the private room as being luxurious and the care as being excellent. “After I had Ellie I took a shower and then got into a tub,” she said. “The nurse came over and handed Ellie to me, telling me they liked being in the water. Ellie’s arms and legs opened up and her eyes closed and she just completely relaxed.
It was such a special moment, I’ll never forget it.” From the party atmosphere of a large family on hand almost immediately, to a private moment of piece with her baby girl, Melanie Snyder found it all at The BirthPlace.
When you work in a demanding field, melding a successful pregnancy and birth into your life can be a challenge. For Katy, that meant finding a way to work full time as an engineer, manage a family (first a husband and then a husband and child), and still be able to get herself to a premier childbirth facility.
Lucky for Katy, she was working full-time in the Plymouth area, and found the Birth Place at Jordan Hospital. “Location was part of the decision for me,” said Katy, ‘But at the same time I didn’t want to compromise.” She asked some friends in the area how they handled it, and the response was unanimous: “They all had wonderful things to say about Jordan.”
Katy went through the process of having her first child there, with an OB right in the town she was working in who was “stellar. She really exceeded all my expectations.” She was back to work part-time in the Plymouth office when she found herself expecting her second child; Katy was thrilled to learn Jordan has OB’s in many communities. The switch to one on the Cape, closer to home, felt more like an offshoot of her original team than a complete change. And for both births, she was in the familiar surroundings she loved at the Birthplace.
