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Mercy Birthing Center
Rendering courtesy of Mercy Hospital St. Louis
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Photography courtesy of daniel shea
Jimmy Lin
While preparing to open newly renovated birthing suites last year, Mercy Hospital St. Louis saw one major trend among patient focus groups: the desire for more natural birth options.
For expectant mothers who are hoping to have natural births but are worried about medical complications, Mercy is creating the $1.5 million Mercy Birthing Center, slated to open in September. It will be the region’s first in-hospital low-risk birthing center, managed by certified nurse midwives.
The center’s four birthing suites aim for a homey feel, with queen-size beds, showers, neutral color schemes, and large tubs, in addition to a central living room with a kitchen, an area for childbirth classes, and space for prenatal visits. If complications occur, medical treatment is close by.
“We want our patients to have a choice about their birth experience, and this new center offers patients a true home-like setting, but with a safety net just an elevator ride away,” says Trish Geldbach, Mercy’s vice president of women’s services. “What sets us apart is that we’ve created a designated special area for these women and their families in a different area of the hospital, instead of just an extra room or two in the labor-and-birth area.”
Expectant mothers meet with their midwives every month of the pregnancy and can take classes on natural childbirth, nutrition, and fitness. Although the center doesn’t open until this fall, patients are being accepted now to start meeting with their midwives—and the demand has been high.
Meanwhile, across Interstate 64, Missouri Baptist Medical Center also has been creating new hospital protocols and a credentialing process for certified nurse midwives to deliver babies alongside hospital obstetricians. “We are proud to be a hospital of choice for women desiring a natural childbirth,” says Dr. David Weinstein, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, “and we want to continue to improve this service to our patients.”
Sourcing Science
As a medical student at Johns Hopkins University, Jimmy Lin witnessed the heartbreak of the family of a child with an undiagnosed genetic disease. The family saw specialist after specialist, yet the child remained undiagnosed. Looking for a way to help, Lin and his friends formed the nonprofit Rare Genomics Institute (raregenomics.org). The idea: Use crowdfunding to raise money to sequence the genomes of undiagnosed patients and an immediate family member, then find volunteer scientists to compare the two and pinpoint the problem.
Maya Nieder, a cheerful 4-year-old who couldn’t speak or run, among other problems, was the institute’s first patient. Less than six hours after Maya’s story was posted, in 2011, her fundraising goal of $2,500 was exceeded. A few months later, Yale University researchers determined that a never-before-seen gene variant was responsible for her developmental delays. From there, researchers at top universities studied her case.
All told, there are nearly 7,000 rare diseases, the majority of which are genetic, afflicting an estimated 350 million people worldwide. And since the first human genome was sequenced more than a decade ago, costs have come down considerably. Most patients on the Rare Genomics Institute’s website must raise less than $10,000 to cover the cost of a medical evaluation, blood test, and DNA analysis.
Since 2011, the institute has helped about 15 children and adults reach their fundraising goals and take the first step towards a diagnosis. “We have more than 100 volunteers on our team, including some of the best researchers in the world, that are just doing this out of the kindness of their hearts,” Lin says. “Our dream is to create a platform where anyone can do research on any disease, so everyone can have truly individualized care.”
