HEALTH & WELLNESS
OBSTETRICS AND NEONATOLOGY
FOR THAT PRECIOUS START TO LIFE with Williamson Medical Center
Williamson Medical Center has given several generations of babies a great start in life. Their experienced obstetricians and nursing staff are here to give your baby a great start, too. They know how important it is for you to have your baby at a hospital you trust, while also remaining close to family and friends. Williamson Medical Center offers expectant mothers personal, compassionate care. FAMILY-CENTERED CARE The labor, delivery and recovery rooms offer comfort and safety for mothers and their babies, birthing beds and overnight accommodations for fathers. ROOMING-IN Parents are encouraged to keep baby in the room as much as possible. Rooming-in gives new parents the opportunity to learn how to care for their infant, with the professional assistance of our nursing staff. A nursery nurse also is available to provide rest and comfort to the new mom. LACTATION SERVICES Lactation services are available to assist mothers who choose to breast-feed. NICU With a higher level of nursery expertise, prepared for your delivery, whether low- or high-risk. Neonatologists, neonatal nurse practitioners, specially trained nurses and a neonatal intensive care unit are essential components of perinatal services. WMC is able to handle high-risk births, such as multiples or births with complications. The NICU allows WMC to care for smaller, sicker infants through additional monitoring and special equipment. PRENATAL CARE Caring for your baby begins long before your baby is born. If you do not have a physician, please call 615.435.5350. At WMC, you will receive comprehensive, family-oriented prenatal care from the time you become pregnant until you deliver your baby. For a nurse-guided tour of the Obstetrics Unit, call 615.435.6024.
62 YOURWILLIAMSON.COM August 2013
A MOTHER’S PERSPECTIVE by Shelly Robertson Birdsong
Giving birth is difficult enough, but it’s all relative, when you find yourself sitting in a chair in the Neonatal Intensive Care of a hospital. It’s all about perspective, and like many mothers, I paid very little attention to the NICU at Williamson Medical Center, as it was pointed out during my child birthing classes. After all, my labor was going to be smooth sailing, and my baby would be born healthy and perfect. Fortunately for me, it was almost the case. However, due to some minimal complications at birth, my daughter was placed in the NICU at Williamson Medical Center and was treated for five additional days. I say minimal. Although, at that moment when she was born and I waited with bated breath to hear a cry, I asked my husband as they examined her, “Is she okay, is she okay?” My brain wasn’t actually registering any other response than “yes she is perfect.” When they briefly let me touch her and kiss her before whisking her off to do further testing, the anguish felt was not something that can be put into words. It’s a heartache most profound. But in the moments and hours that followed, learning our child’s prognosis and entering the NICU, I knew that I was thankful to be right where I was. I was in my local hospital, where the nurses I observed were caring for my daughter, as carefully and lovingly as I would have. I only had to go a few yards
down the hall from my room to reach my baby, and I could sit and hold her, feed her and be near her as much as I wanted. It was there, that I chose to quiet my soul with the fact that if this was going to happen to us, at least we didn’t have to drive back and forth to Nashville to be with our baby. We were close, and we knew she was receiving top of the line care. This was our experience with the NICU at Williamson Medical Center. For us, it was frightening at first, but overall a minimal stay and experience. However, for the hundreds of parents who have much more serious situations and the precious little ones who come to the NICU and stay for weeks or months with life threatening illness, this particular unit is somewhere, when in what is surely the hardest of times for anyone under any circumstances, a loving, peaceful and impressive atmosphere. I rocked my baby with her tubes and IV’s, my eyes wandering around the nursery at the many other babies who were so tiny and so sick. How fortunate we are in Williamson County to have this facility, unheard of in most local hospitals. For the moments in life that truly are life changing, there is nowhere else I would have rather been and nowhere I would have trusted more, when extra care and attention were needed. Thank you Williamson Medical Center and all of the staff and nurses of the NICU.