Expanded birthing center opens at St. David's North Austin amid Central Texas baby boom
St. David's Women's Center of Texas at North Austin Medical Center opened its expanded labor and delivery unit Monday. Earlier in July it opened an expanded neonatal intensive care unit. Ascension Seton Medical Center in Central Austin broke ground on its new women's health tower in March.
These expansions come after a decade of a steady baby boom in Central Texas.
Driven by people moving to the region for jobs, the number of births in Travis, Williamson, Bastrop, Caldwell and Hays county hospitals has increased by almost 19% from 2012 to 2022, according to state birth certificate data provided by the Texas Department of State Health Services' Center for State Health Statistics. The 2021 and 2022 data have been tabulated but not finalized.
The data show a steady increase from year to year beginning in 2018: That year, births went up 0.55% from the previous year, followed by a 1.85% increase in 2019, 1.64% in 2020, 5.08% in 2021 and 6.75% in 2022, if the 2021 and 2022 numbers hold.
The population of the Austin metro area also has grown. In 2012, it was 1.8 million. In 2022, it was 2.4 million, a 33% increase, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Are recent numbers influenced by abortion access?
This summer, researchers at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that the 2021 Texas abortion law, which restricted abortion once a fetal heartbeat was detected, resulted in 9,799 more births in the state between April and December 2022.
"10,000 births is a bit of a shock to the system," said Alison Gemmill, one of the researchers at Johns Hopkins. "The importance of this research is there are real world implications of this."
The researchers have not yet looked at the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which put abortion rules back in states' hands, effectively banning abortion in Texas.
Gemmill expects when the researchers do look at the effects of Dobbs, they will see greater increases in births. They also have not completed research on the demographics and geography of the babies.
The Statesman reached out to Central Texas hospital systems St. David's HealthCare, Ascension Texas and Baylor Scott & White, which would not comment on this study specifically. Locally, federally qualified health centers People's Community Clinic, CommUnityCare and Lone Star Circle of Care also did not respond or emailed that they wouldn't respond because the research relates to the heartbeat bill.
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The need for expansions
St. David's noted that its new expansions of the NICU and the Women's Center were "years in the making" and that it has been growing its maternal health program for years.
Three years ago, the North Austin center was delivering about 600 babies a month. Now it delivers 900, Amy Irons, director of neonatal services at the hospital, said when the expanded NICU opened in July.
The hospital had 9,452 births last year. It is on track to cross the 10,000 threshold this year.
The expansion "allows us to accommodate more and more women," said Dr. Kimberly DeStefano, medical director of maternal fetal medicine at St. David's Women's Center of Texas.
She attributes the increase in the center's births to people moving to Austin because large companies such as Tesla and Amazon have moved here as well as the growth in technology firms.
"We're right on track with all of the growth," DeStefano said.
Inside the NICU expansion: For the smallest of the small: St. David's expands North Austin NICU to help more preemies
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Amid baby boom, St. David's North Austin expands birthing center
