Birth Center fundraising continues

Roughly three months after North Valley Hospital in Whitefish completed its Birth Center expansion, the hospital is still raising money to pay for the project.

The expansion was built to deliver 250 infants each year, according to Catherine Todd, senior director of business development and community relations. In 2015, the hospital delivered 548 newborns.

“It was just time,” Todd said. “The population kept growing, so we had to, too.”

The hospital has raised $1.3 million out of the $2 million needed for the expansion, including renovation of existing areas. The hospital paid for the project with a mix of cash from operations and through donations, Todd said.

The project is a part of the hospital’s Building for Generations campaign, which began in 2012 as a comprehensive plan to meet current and future health-care needs.

The first section of the campaign ended in 2013, with the addition of a fourth operating room to address the hospital’s growth in surgeries and to maintain access for emergency Caesarean sections. Fundraising for the Birth Center began in February 2015 and construction ended in November.

The 2,730-square-foot expansion created three new rooms outfitted for delivery and postpartum needs, creating a total of five labor/delivery/recovery/postpartum rooms and two solely postpartum rooms.

Before the expansion, medical staffers worked in tight spaces and 30 percent of mothers experienced their postpartum care in general inpatient rooms on the opposite side of the hospital.

Todd said the expansion has allowed the hospital to comfortably deliver more than 500 newborns each year. If that number grows, some patients will most likely end up in inpatient rooms again, she said.

The Birth Center project renovated another 1,045 feet of existing space, which expanded the nursery, nursing station and family waiting room and added a lactation room for new mothers.

Registered Nurse Callie Tuck said the new rooms tuck away signs of being in a hospital as an effort to create a home-environment for each new family.

After the birth, the delivery bed is wheeled out of the room and a full bed folds down from the wall. The instruments used during the delivery are also wheeled away or slide into wooden cupboards.

Tuck said the increased delivery and postpartum rooms keep moms close to their newborns directly after birth.

“There’s not that jarring moment of gathering up the entire family, gifts and flowers to another room,” Tuck said. “They have that time to bond and connect as a family.”

The center will have an open house to share the new space with the community on March 15.

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.