Expectant Parents Focused on New Baby, Not New Year

Twenty women, the future in their bellies, lie on floor mats with pillows supporting their heads and legs at a birthing class in Laguna Hills.

Although they all expect their babies to arrive around the New Year’s weekend, Y2K fears are not on their calendar. Rather, they are concerned about the upcoming births they must manage sometime in the next several weeks.

“Being pregnant makes you feel the millennium isn’t that big a deal,” said Alison Leigber of Aliso Viejo, who is expecting her first child next month. “This is something bigger than a year changing.”

Across Orange County and the Southland, hospitals report that they will be ready to deliver babies that night regardless of whatever else might happen on New Year’s Eve and early New Year’s Day, which this year fall on Friday and Saturday.

In fact, it might be one of the safest weekend nights of the year to have a baby, said some hospital officials. While things vary from hospital to hospital, many will have additional personnel on duty and most will have other personnel on call.

All hospitals said they have been working to eliminate the chance of Y2K computer problems for more than a year, updating vulnerable equipment and checking backup systems, as well as taking part in local and statewide emergency drills built around millennium disaster scenarios. Several physicians said that expectant couples will have more to worry about from drunk drivers, revelers and the possibility of civil disturbances than trouble at hospitals.

“Safety issues are not going to be technical ones [at the hospital],” said Dr. Jonathan Wheeler, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.

Besides, delivering babies is considered fairly routine, said many medical personnel. On a typical day, about 140 babies are born in Orange County.

“Just think about all the years people have been having babies,” nurse and counselor Kathy Higgs told Leigber’s birthing class Thursday night at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center. The worst thing that might happen is a power failure--and the hospital has backup generators, she told them.

“You can still get an epidural [pain shot],” Higgs said to nervous laughter rippling through the group of 40 parents-to-be.

Only one person even inquired about Y2K readiness at the hospital. It was on her mind, said Amy Nguyen of Mission Viejo, because she works for a major tax and payroll firm that has spent $17 million upgrading computers to avoid millennium bugs.

“It’s nice to know the hospital has made contingency plans,” she said.

A Surge in Births?

But most expectant parents are focused on their child’s birth--having a healthy baby and a good birthing experience--rather than worrying about any problems should the baby come on New Year’s eve or day, according to officials at several Orange County hospitals and dozens of parents interviewed.

Whether there’ll be a surge of expectant patients to tax hospital resources is a different question. Physicians and hospital officials expressed differing opinions on whether there will be a run on maternity wards by people trying to have a millennium baby.

But in recognition of the occasion, some hospitals--including Saddleback and Long Beach Memorial Medical Center--will give a $2,000 savings bond, a host of prizes from their vendors or gift certificates from local businesses to the first baby of the year born there.

Of the 50,000 live births in Orange County each year, St. Joseph Hospital in Orange usually leads the pack, recording about 6,200 in 1998. Hoag reported the next-highest number of births, 4,200, in 1998. Most hospitals are prepared for anything.

But at Hoag, a census done recently to set staffing for the New Year’s weekend found that full-term deliveries are expected to be down for the New Year’s weekend. Wheeler thought there could instead be a surge in births from February through April, due in large part to couples who wanted to conceive last April to have a millennium baby but took a few months to succeed in getting pregnant.

“The likelihood of someone conceiving in a certain month is one in three,” Wheeler said.

Shooting for Midnight

No mother at the Laguna Hills birthing class admitted to an even fleeting thought about having the first baby of the year, and most viewed the hoopla over Y2K as a nuisance.

“I would rather avoid that date, because I think it will be a crazy night,” said Lori Williams of Orange. “I don’t want to have any TV cameras in my face.”

Among expectant fathers, the thinking can be different.

“You always have dads who want to deliver before the New Year to get the full year’s tax deduction for the child,” said Dr. David Lagrew, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Saddleback. “The big thing will be to try to have the last baby of [1999] to get the notoriety and the tax deduction.”

But Steve Williams, Lori’s husband, surprised her by saying he “would prefer” having the child on New Year’s Day.

“It is rare and unusual,” he said of that date. “But we are mainly concerned that [the baby] be healthy.”

Most doctors and hospital officials said it is highly unlikely--as well as medically unwise and perhaps unethical--that a doctor and parents would conspire to deliver a baby just after midnight by scheduling a caesarean birth that was not medically necessary. In fact, most hospitals do not schedule C-sections for weekends or nighttime hours, though an emergency surgical birth could take place at any hour.

St. Joseph and Hoag, however, have boosted staff for the weekend and permit medically necessary scheduled C-sections at any time. A mother who needed a caesarean delivery could set surgery for that hour, said officials at both hospitals.

But, Wheeler noted, no one had requested a delivery at Hoag at that hour.

“Personally, I would not bend the rules to get someone [who didn’t fit the criteria] delivered at that hour,” he said. “What is more important is a healthy baby than to make headlines.”