DELAWARE — When Alexis Stover arrived at Grady Memorial Hospital on July 29, everyone in the building knew the baby she was about to deliver would hold a special place in the hospital’s history.
Her son, Baron Casey, would be the last baby born at Grady Memorial’s inpatient maternity unit.
The Delaware native arrived around 7 a.m. to be induced at 38 weeks after developing gestational diabetes during her pregnancy. Almost exactly 11 hours later, Baron entered the world at 7:20 p.m.
His father, Ocean Casey, helped catch him sunny-side up. Dr. William Hammett came in specifically for the delivery despite not being the physician on call that evening.
Then, for the first and last time, Dr. Hammett pushed Grady’s “birthday button” — playing a twinkling version of the classic birthday song throughout the entire unit.
The press of that button marked the end of decades of births at Grady Memorial Hospital — a moment that weeks of rallies, resolutions, legal arguments and community advocacy had sought to prevent.
“It was super sweet because he’s never done that before, and it was a bittersweet moment,” Stover said. “I’m really happy he got to do that.”
Getting to Grady
Baby Baron’s place in Grady’s history almost didn’t happen.
Stover said several physicians at OhioHealth had initially recommended she deliver elsewhere because of her gestational diabetes and a history of hemorrhaging during a previous delivery.
But Stover wanted to return to Grady, where she had delivered her oldest son, Grayson, eight years earlier.
Ultimately, Hammett agreed that her diabetes was well-controlled and her risk of hemorrhage was low enough to be managed at Grady.
“It was actually a miracle that I could go there in the first place,” Stover said.
Stover had another reason for wanting to stay close to home.
Her middle son, 5-year-old Micah, has special needs after suffering three strokes at just two years old. Staying in Delaware made it easier for her family to coordinate his care while still allowing Stover’s mother to be present for Baron’s birth.
Stover also knows firsthand how different the experiences could be. Her first son was born at Grady, but Micah was born at OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, a 34-minute drive from her home in Delaware.
At Grady, Stover said, she felt nurses could spend more time with individual patients.
“I feel like when you go to bigger hospitals, they rush you because they want you in and out of the room,” Stover said. “But Grady wasn’t like that. They were super sweet and let me go in my own time.”
Stover believes the maternity unit’s small size was also one of its greatest strengths.
“The fact that it’s a smaller unit is, like, their whole reason they want to close it, right?” Stover said. “But I think that’s what makes it the best.”
One final birth
After receiving an epidural, Stover delivered Baron after about 20 minutes of pushing.
Hammett wasn’t supposed to be there. Stover said he even had a meeting scheduled that afternoon but canceled it so he could deliver Baron himself.
“He was like, ‘No way I’m going to miss this baby,'” Stover said. “He did everything he could to make sure he was there for us.”
Hammett had known Casey’s family for years, she said, adding another personal connection to a delivery already filled with them.
During the birth, Hammett also allowed Casey to help catch his son.
“That was really cool, too, because that’s like a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Stover said.
Two days later on July 31, Stover and Casey left the hospital with their new baby boy — the same day Grady’s inpatient maternity unit officially closed.
But first, the hospital staff had planned one final goodbye.
Employees lined the hallways as the family made its way toward the exit. They applauded while Stover and Casey carried the last baby born at Grady out of the hospital.
“It was literally every single staff member,” Stover said. “The entire place was just standing and lining the hallways, and it was so emotional.”
For so many, Stover knew her family’s departure represented more than the end of another patient’s stay.
“It’s what they love to do,” she said.
The future of birth in Delaware
OhioHealth announced June 10 that it would close Grady’s inpatient maternity unit — seven weeks before Baron became the last hospital birth in Delaware.
OhioHealth has said declining obstetric volumes contributed to the decision. During the previous fiscal year, fewer than 10% of babies born within the OhioHealth system to families living in Delaware County were delivered at Grady.
The health system has also said many Delaware County families were already choosing Dublin Methodist and Riverside Methodist hospitals, which offer around-the-clock obstetric providers and higher levels of newborn care.
Stover worries what the loss of a closer option will mean for women who experience complications or need additional monitoring during pregnancy.
“I feel for all the women who are pregnant right now,” she said. “What about all the women who are going through high-risk pregnancies, or what if a placental abruption happens? It kills people, it kills babies, it kills women.”
Stover has spent her entire life in Delaware. She is now a stay-at-home mom raising three boys in the same community where she grew up.
She has watched the city get bigger, but she doesn’t view that growth negatively. To Stover, generations of families choosing to remain in Delaware is part of what a healthy community is supposed to look like.
“People have kids, those kids have kids,” she said. “It’s something that’s supposed to happen.”
That’s part of what makes losing the county’s only hospital-based labor and delivery unit difficult to reconcile.
“You’d figure that babies and women would be things that are protected, especially because you need kids to make the world a better place after you’re gone,” she said. “And it’s insane that we’re losing one of the most vulnerable, yet biggest assets that we could have.”
The closure has also changed the way Stover thinks about her own family’s future. Before Baron was born, she hadn’t decided whether he would be her last child.
Now, she said, she has.
“It makes me afraid. I didn’t know for sure Baron was going to be my last baby or not, but now I’m sure that he is because how would I get help?” she said.
“It’s a scary thought. How many of us are going to die?”
