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Fort Wainwright experiencing a baby boom

Oct- 1-2007 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

By Amanda Bohman - Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska — As Nancy Cone awaited the arrival of her 13th grandchild at Bassett Army Community Hospital last weekend, the atmosphere was intense, she said.

And Cone wasn’t just referring to her daughter-in-law’s labor. Cone could hear the wails of multiple expectant mothers or new arrivals echoing through the hospitals maternity ward Sunday.

“There was, like, five or six babies born the day we came in,” Cone said. “You could see the nurses just moving.”

Nine months after the return of the 1st Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division from a long tour in Iraq, Bassett hospital is poised to break an all-time record with the number of babies being born this fall, said hospital spokesman Mike Berry.

This month, 69 babies had come into the world on the Army post as of Thursday morning, with Army projections showing 41 more are due by today. Eighty-seven births are expected for the month of October. The hospital typically averages 40 births per month, according to the Army.

The baby boom has caused the hospital to bring in a nurse from a medical facility in Seattle, officials said. Vacations have been curtailed, workers are logging longer days and doctors are juggling near-simultaneous deliveries. Officials said they are also scrambling to make sure every expectant mother has a bed.

“We’ve said, ‘All right, the next one through the door, and we may have to improvise,’” said Maj. Matt Packham, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at the hospital. “This is sometimes as busy as it gets when you have six or seven deliveries in a day.”

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