Hundreds of newborns in need of emergency surgery to save their lives are flown to Children’s Hospital each year or rushed across campus from University of Colorado Hospital just moments after birth. But by early next year, women carrying babies known to have heart defects or other severe abnormalities will be able to give birth at Children’s — inches away from a team of physicians and specialists ready to whisk an infant into surgery.

Denver Children’s will join only a handful of pediatric hospitals — in Boston, Houston, Cincinnati and Philadelphia — that have maternity wards when it completes a renovation in early 2011. The hospital’s $228 million expansion, expected to open by the end of 2012, will devote an entire floor to the new maternal- fetal advanced-care program, a collaboration among Children’s, University Hospital and the CU medical school.

Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center has a similar maternal-fetal advanced-care program, which will continue when the hospital opens its new 160,000-square-foot building next month, said Dr. Reginald Washington, the hospital’s chief medical officer.

Advances in technology in the past several years — mainly higher-quality ultrasounds to peer inside the womb — are giving women and their doctors better warning of congenital abnormalities. Pediatric cardiologists and surgeons are able to immediately help babies whose lungs don’t function or whose hearts don’t pump blood.

Sometimes, minutes matter.

“So many of these babies are critically ill,” said Dr. Henry Galan, University Hospital’s chief of maternal-fetal medicine. “Having the baby delivered (under) the same roof where the pediatric experts are would make a big difference.”

John Michael Larson began his life on Oct. 4, 2008 and was hurried into an ambulance and shuttled across parking lots on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora while his mom stayed behind at University Hospital.

Doctors knew before John was born that many of his organs were in the wrong place — his stomach, spleen, colon and intestines were squished up in his chest, his heart nearly in his shoulder. His lungs were too cramped to develop enough for him to breathe.

He made no noise at birth.

“No crying. I didn’t expect him to,” said his mother, Megan Larson. “But I saw his little arms and legs fighting the doctors.”

Mom and baby were separated for two days after John was born while he was at Children’s getting stabilized for surgery. John is now 21 months old and healthy, but looking back, Megan wishes she could have been closer to him after his birth.

“I had the number to the NICU, but certainly, that’s not the same,” said Larson, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

In the past two years, six babies have been born at Children’s after the hospital set up a makeshift labor room. Those babies — all but one of whom survived — needed immediate surgery because their hearts could not pump blood. As soon as their umbilical cords were cut, their blood supply stopped.

The hospital expects to deliver up to 75 babies during the maternal-fetal program’s first year, said Children’s chief executive Jim Shmerling. With the 2012 expansion, which will include 14 to 18 labor rooms, Children’s eventually could deliver up to 1,000 babies every year.

A handful of pediatric and maternal specialists from Children’s and University will run the program, but hundreds of other physicians — including nephrologists, anesthesiologists, cardiologists and endocrinologists — will work with patients when needed.

“There is a whole lot more we can do if we bring the program together in one place,” Shmerling said.

The new maternal-fetal center will incorporate existing programs that provide counseling to teenage mothers, mental health services for pregnant women with depression brought on by their unborn babies’ diagnosis and palliative care for newborns who will not survive. The program will focus on babies who will need medical intervention shortly after birth, but it will accept moms having healthy infants, too, Galan said.

The neonatology unit at Children’s, ranked among the nation’s top 10, has 45 newborns on an average day. University Hospital, which delivers 3,200 babies every year, has a long history of advanced prenatal care. Doctors there were among the first to use an ultrasound machine 40 years ago and developed the first neonatal growth benchmarks in the world.

The collaborative program is likely to foster additional maternal-fetal research and, along with it, federal research dollars, said Bruce Schroffel, University Hospital president.

“That’s what this whole campus is about, the synergy,” Schroffel said. “A big goal of ours and mine is to make this a place to go from a national perspective.”

Children’s officials would not say how much money the hospital is investing in the new program.

-Jennifer Brown

More from Mile High Mamas

• The Children’s Hospital Q & A: Pet Allergies
• The Children’s Hospital Q & A: Stomach Pain or Appendicitis?
• The Children’s Hospital Q & A: Soothing Summertime Allergies

Mile High Mamas Recommends

• The need for immigration reform in the U.S. (3 letters)  (eLetters)
• An insider's look at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children | Seen First — Denver society news — The Denver Post  (Seen First)
• Thankful for good Samaritans at Wendy’s  (eLetters)

Mile High Mamas Marketplace

• A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror  (Amazon | Books)
• Work with Passion in Midlife and Beyond: Reach Your Full Potential and Make the Money You Need  (Amazon | Books)

Ask Mile High Mamas To Recommend Your Posts