By Heart of Illinois ABC

BLOOMINGTON – The COVID-19 pandemic is causing an increase of patients at the Birth Center of Bloomington Normal, an option that keeps families out of the hospital when delivering a baby.

The Birth Center in Bloomington is the only of its kind if downstate Illinois, allowing women with low-risk pregnancies the opportunity to deliver outside a hospital, since 2016.

But since the pandemic started, the administrator says they’ve seen an increase in interest.

“We saw about a 20-percent increase in births last year, and we’re expecting to have about a 50-percent growth this year,” said Administrator Stephanie Harper.

Harper says the influx of calls started about a month into the pandemic, as women were looking to hear about their birth options.

“We noticed really, about last April where we started to get a lot more contacts, people looking for more options. They have a lot of concerns with safety, they wanted to be in a well environment,” said Harper.

The facility doesn’t have the same COVID-19 policies as local hospitals, and offers different comfort options, like water births.

These are some of the reasons Elizabeth Hedges of LeRoy chose to deliver her second son at this facility about a month ago.

“Not having to worry about ‘is my support person going to be able to be here?’ was a huge relief. We also very close to our parents, so having them allowed to come in to meet our son immediately after he’s born was a huge thing for us too,” said Hedges.

Masks aren’t required for mothers and families, and the facility is designed to give an ‘at-home’ experience, with midwives helping through the process. Hedges described her experience here as ‘empowering‘.

“You walk away from that feeling empowered and just strong… and you kind of learn to just trust your body more. It makes you feel like going into mothering, too, I can do this… I know what I’m doing,” said Hedges.

Harper says the center has seen an increase of about five births per month, which is a lot for a facility of their size. However, she says it’s an easy transition to serve more families.

The Birth Center is partnered with local doctors and EMS crews in the event of an emergency.

Harper says they’ve delivered more than 400 babies, with a Caesarean section rate of less than 5-percent. The national average for c-sections is around 32-percent.

The Birth Center of Bloomington Normal does accept major insurance plans.

Heart of Illinois ABC can be reached at [email protected].