Baby BOOM in St. Paul

Babies, babies and more babies. Eight girls, eight boys, 16 anxious mothers and at least a dozen nurses racing to and fro. When the baby boom at St. Paul's Regions Hospital ended Tuesday evening, everyone agreed that so many births in 17 hours might be a record.

"We had lots and lots of babies and very happy families, but exhausted nurses," said Kristin Surdy, a registered nurse in the thick of the labor and delivery pandemonium at Regions' Birth Center. At one point, she had a baby in each arm and four mothers in labor.

The first birth came at 2:03 a.m., the last at 9 p.m. Various family dramas filled the hours in between.

Take Pang Yang, for instance. She intended to give birth at Regions but gave birth in her bathroom at home soon after her husband left for work. As she lay on the bathroom floor, cradling her new daughter, she wondered how to call for help. But her daughter Cecilia, a toddler, came into the bathroom carrying her baby bottle in one hand and her mother's cell phone in the other.

"God must lead her there with a cell phone," said Yang, who was resting at Regions with her baby, Syndney Lee, on Wednesday. Both were in good health.

She laughingly recalled a phone conversation with her husband, Suewasiengboom Lee, who had a problem on the freeway. "The baby is crying like crazy, we have a paramedic coming and you have a flat tire," she told him before she was whisked off to Regions.

Meanwhile, her sister-in-law five doors down also joined the baby boom -- delivering a boy.

Just why so many births happened in a single day remained a matter of opinion in the birth center. "It's usually a full moon or a storm," said Debbie McIlhon, a charge nurse who's worked in Regions' labor and delivery unit for 10 years.

As for how all those babies got started, well, that's a matter of speculation too, McIlhon said. No major snowfalls came early last fall and nobody had taken a survey of mothers to determine whether last summer's return of Minnesota National Guard troops from Iraq might have inspired the baby frenzy.

But McIlhon did say that July is a peak month for births at Regions.

Other metro hospitals are reporting a barrage of birthing, too. On July 1, St. John Hospital in Maplewood delivered 11 babies in 10 hours. On Tuesday, 14 babies were delivered in 24 hours at Woodwinds Hospital in Woodbury and eight at St. Joseph Hospital in St. Paul. The record in the HealthEast network -- to which those hospitals belong -- is 19 babies born in 24 hours at the Maplewood hospital, said spokeswoman Jodi Ritacca.

Although this summer's numbers suggest an upward trend in births, data from the Minnesota Center for Health Statistics show that isn't the case. Spokeswoman Carol Hajicek said 37,415 babies were born in the first six months of the year, 175 fewer than the same period last year. But some big hospitals might not have reported all their numbers yet, she said.

One of those mothers is Jennifer Stokes, who gave birth to a daughter, Jameelah, at 12:06 p.m. after an examination the day before showed the baby's heart rate falling.

Now mother and daughter are fine. "The pain, that's not cool, but it was worth it," Stokes said, wincing as she turned in bed. Her new daughter, who weighed 8 pounds 1 ounce, is her first.

"It's weird to be a mom for the first time," she said. "You never know how you expect to feel. When you see your baby for the first time it's like a spirit goes through you. You've got to be a good role model for your child. It's not about you anymore."

Surdy said nurses ran all day. "As the morning went on we had patients walking in right and left," she said. By 11 a.m. she had to change clothes because she was such a mess.

Every woman received "safe care," McIlhon said, but the nurses didn't have time for labor coaching and other comfort services that they usually provide. Extra nurses were summoned when it became clear by midmorning that Tuesday was no typical day in the birth center, accustomed to seeing five to eight births on average.