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Ashland Hospital expands childbirth classes, services By SUSAN JAY ASHLAND -- This town's community hospital is the smallest in the valley, but it now offers the same comprehensive services to expectant moms that are available in Medford. Open house set The public is invited to an open house of Ashland Community Hospital's remodeled birth center and the hospital's $1 million, state-of-the-art surgical facility. The open house is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the hospital, 280 Maple. The open house includes activities for children, refreshments, prizes and demonstrations of high-tech surgery equipment. Ashland Community Hospital's services include childbirth classes, a lactation consultant and a weekly breast feeding support group. Nurses will also help moms-to-be design their individual birth plans. The new services are in addition to the labor room with whirlpool, piped-in music, special care nursery and lightweight wireless contraction and infant heartbeat monitors. The childbirth education classes, now taught by nurses, and the certified lactation consultant and breast feeding support group are all free and sponsored by the hospital. "We felt there was such a need for that in this valley," Sue Corrie, obstetrics coordinator, said of the education and support services. If moms in Ashland or Talent needed help in this area before, they had to go to Medford, she said. The 49-bed hospital also spent $200,000 in remodeling its six birthing suites, adding a new childbirth education room and expanding the nurses work station. The newly appointed suites each have bay windows, with a bench large enough for sleeping, new beds and new infant resuscitators and warmers. The hospital added two surgical suites in January 1998, for outpatient and inpatient surgery. It now has a total of four. The impetus behind the improvements and added services came from a task force of physicians, who wanted to know what patients and the community thought was needed at the hospital. They heard patients say they wanted more childbirth education services and nicer birthing rooms, said Dr. Yvonne Fried. The doctors wanted rooms that were bigger and easier to work in, and had better organization of equipment. The Ashland hospital, along with local doctors and nurses, was the first in the area to introduce the concept of birthing suites in the 1970s. These suites had a regular bed and larger rooms, so family members could be present during the birth, Fried said. Peg Cockrell, director of human resources, said the hospital's birth center is equipped and staffed to handle all kinds of birthing situations including Cesareans, twins and pre-term babies. "We have the expertise to take care of immediate problems," Fried said. Doctors and nurses make sure pre-term babies are stable, then phone the prenatal intensive care unit at Rogue Valley Medical Center. RVMC sends a nurse and respiratory therapist to Ashland to assess the infant, and to transport him or her to RVMC if necessary. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA