Hospital hires new director of maternity care

Rebecca Hengehold wants the birth experience at Sonoma Valley Hospital to be focused around the whole family. “Sonoma Valley moms shouldn’t feel like they’re just a number,” she said. “Our goal is for people to have their birth, their way.”
The new director of maternity care at Sonoma Valley Hospital as of a month ago, Hengehold is looking at every aspect of the hospital’s birth center and will be guiding changes and improvements to be implemented over the next few years. Her position, which is new, is part of an overall strategy at the hospital to offer improved women’s health services.
The hospital’s birth center sees about 240 births a year and Hengehold would like to see that number increase to 300. The hospital currently has 10 rooms in the birth center, three of which are so-called “labor-delivery-recovery-post-partum rooms,” which are set up so that mom doesn’t have to get moved around, but stays in that one room from check-in through delivery and recovery.
“The nurse that brings you in is probably going to discharge you,” said Hengehold.
The rooms are just one part of the family-centered care ethos that Hengehold wants to further integrate into the birth center. The hospital is already moving in that direction – for instance, the hospital doesn’t have shared rooms for new mothers, but offers a private space for the family. Other examples of changes to make care more family-centered might include a pull-out double bed so that dad can spend the night in the hospital with the new baby, but not be relegated to a cot, and doing away with tightly circumscribed visiting hours.
Hengehold said that with visits, it should all be up to the mom. There shouldn’t be prescribed hours for visits from the family and anyone else that she wants there should be able to come in when she wants them.
Hengehold knows the birth center well. She grew up in Sonoma and knew she wanted to work as a maternity nurse from the time she was 17 years old. After graduating from nursing school, she worked at Sonoma Valley Hospital for six months, then spent three years working in mother-baby nursing in San Diego. She worked as a nurse in the Sonoma hospital birth center for another six years before taking time off to have her own children: Drew, 6 and Lauren, 4. She then became certified in Lamaze and taught classes in place of Disty Thompson, who she said has now returned to teaching Lamaze, allowing her to take this opportunity.
“It gave me a really complete picture to help me in this role,” said Hengehold of her varied experience. “You hear it all first-hand. This is such a transformative time in a women’s life.”