This spring has been full of life in Almonte, as the local hospital has seen its biggest baby boom in recent memory.
Dr. Melanie Fortune, the Almonte General Hospital’s lead of family medicine obstetrics says they averaged more than one birth per day.
“We had about 33 babies born in March, which is at least 50 per cent more than what I believe we saw in the year prior,” said Fortune.
“So the thing about babies is they don’t arrive on schedule and they don’t arrive evenly distributed,” added Mary Wilson Trider, the hospital’s president and CEO. “So we had days that were really crazy because we had five or six.”
Dr. Fortune says the new life is great for the community.
“We slept less, we probably ate less, and saw our own families less. But for us it’s the reason we do this job,” she said.
Fortune reckons the hospital delivered more girls than boys in March.
But the mystery remains as to why March was such a bountiful month for babies in Almonte.
“Usually we have increased births in September, August, those kinds of times,” says Fortune. “But there is no rhyme or reason. We had more in February too; it was a fairly busy month as well.”
Ottawa mother Laura Dangerfield gave birth to her fourth child, Ezra, in Almonte, just catching the tail end of the baby boom.
“We were induced here on March 31st, and then he came on April 1st,” she tells CTV News.
Dangerfield says word of mouth recommended that she give birth to her fourth child in Almonte, and she believes the high level of care may be the reason so many more babies are arriving in the Ottawa Valley hospital.
“When I was here, it wasn’t too busy, or at least it didn’t seem that way. I think the care here — you wouldn’t have known that they were as busy as they were.”
“We’ve got a terrific five bed unit,” adds Wilson Trider. “And we are the only obstetrics unit in the Champlain region between Pembroke and the Queensway Carleton Hospital.”