Middleton to get state's first birth center
Associated Press
Last Updated: Jan. 20, 2003
Middleton - A nurse-midwife will open the state's first birth center next month to offer women with low-risk pregnancies an alternative to hospitals.
The 2,700-square-foot Madison Birth Center is expected to offer prenatal classes and other women's health care.
It also will feature two birthing suites, each with a queen-sized bed, tub for water births, big window, direct access outside and a newborn resuscitation area. A family room is equipped with a kitchen, pull-out couch, television, books and videos.
"This is an option that should be available to women in the Madison area," said Aszani Kunkler, a certified nurse-midwife who is the owner and director of the birth center in Middleton.
The birth center joins about 160 others nationwide, some affiliated with hospitals or built adjacent to them.
Hospitals must offer the most intensive care available, she said, and patients must deal with institutional routines, unfamiliar caretakers and new faces with every shift change.
For a healthy woman, birth is a joyous and normal part of family life and an experience that she deserves to understand, plan and control with the support of her health care provider, Kunkler said.
Birth centers are "giving women another choice," said Kelly Lindgren, an assistant professor of nursing at UW-Madison. "I think safety has been pretty well-established in some well-done studies."
But medical people believe the unpredictable possibility of a life-threatening childbirth emergency leaves women and babies facing a real risk if they're not in a hospital.
"It's a 1 percent chance that something can go very wrong," said Karl Rudat, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Dean Medical Center. "Does somebody want to take that risk? Some people do."
