MEDINA, Ohio — Over the weekend, Portage County’s last labor and delivery unit closed its doors—earlier than expected.
That now makes Portage one of three counties here in Northeast Ohio that has no labor and delivery units, forcing mothers to drive great lengths across county lines to have their babies.
Ashtabula and Medina counties are the two other counties that have been trying to function without those critical services for years.
As News 5’s Courtney Gousman continues her series, Delivering Better Results, she explores the deficits and dangers that exist for pregnant women and their babies here in Northeast Ohio.
News 5 traveled to those two counties to see what kind of decisions expecting mothers are facing, and what childbirth has been like for some. The results were devastating.
Love came easy for Lacey and Justin Wehrley.
The Medina couple met online and have been together for 10 years and married for six, with much of that time focused on trying to grow their family.
“We weren’t having any luck and found out that we would need fertility treatments in order to get pregnant,” Lacey Wehrley said.
Success came in March 2021 when the couple learned they were expecting a baby boy.
“She was very excited, but I was beyond tearful and joyful to know that I was finally going to have a child and start a family,” Justin Wehrley said.
With their nursery nearly complete at 31 weeks into Lacey Wehrley’s pregnancy, all that joy vanished.
“Four days after our baby shower I woke up and just wasn’t feeling 100%. And I had had some spotting, which I had not had at all during this pregnancy,” she said.
Wehrley called her doctor and made an appointment for later that morning, and it became painfully clear she was in a race against the clock.
“I ended up getting sick, and at the same time my water broke and my placenta abrupted and I started bleeding uncontrollably and we called 911,” she said.
Paramedics were there within minutes, rushing Wehrley to the nearest hospital, which was a quick one-minute ambulance ride away.
Once she reached the ER, doctors informed her they could not find her son’s heartbeat.
“We were told because our hospital no longer had a Labor and Delivery Unit, the doctor did say, ‘You know, I'm not an OB so I can’t find it, but we need to send you somewhere just to make sure,’” Wehrley said.
That hospital’s Labor and Delivery Unit closed in 2017, leaving Medina County with no maternity ward.
As Wehrley worried about her son, her condition deteriorated.
Doctors gave her the option of going to either Akron or Fairview in Cleveland, but she could not endure the lengthy ambulance ride of 30 minutes or more in either direction.
She would have to be life-flighted.
“I just knew I was bleeding and could just feel gushing coming from myself, and I knew that was not good,” she said. “We actually had to wait because the helicopter was in Parma so I had to wait for it to get to Medina.”
The Wehrleys said at least an hour went by from the time Lacey Wehrley arrived at the hospital in Medina to her arrival at Fairview where doctors also could not find a heartbeat for their son.
Wehrley would have to be put under so doctors could perform a C-section.
“It was one of those things, I knew that things were not good. Now I can lose my wife too. And I was just in tears and just heartbroken,” Justin Wehrley said.
After hours in surgery and multiple blood transfusions, the Wherleys' son was delivered—stillborn on Oct. 7, 2021.
“He was 3 pounds, 2 ounces,” Lacey Wehrley said. “His name is Jayden Paul Wehrley. He was perfect. He was absolutely perfect."
“For me, at first, I didn’t want to hold him. I was scared," Justin Wehrley said. "But the doctors told us, ‘You have to see this baby.’ At that point—that’s the point I held him and just lost it and just cried and cried and cried."
Now more than a year later, the Wherleys find themselves haunted by that hospital just steps from their home. A hospital that closed its labor and delivery unit years earlier.
“It makes us question. You start to ask yourself what if,” Lacey Wehrley said. “Could that have saved him? Could that have saved me from everything I went through? I mean, they did the best they could, but it doesn’t change the fact that they don’t have those services or those doctors at that hospital.”
Ashtabula County Health Commissioner Jay Becker called it a “public health issue.”
“It’s a huge problem. It's not good for the mother. It's not good for the baby,” Becker said.
Becker pulled the numbers and showed News 5 that the last full year Ashtabula County Medical Center had its Labor and Delivery Unit open was in 2019.
Three-hundred-eighteen babies were born in the county that year. The unit closed in 2020.
And the first full year without that maternity ward, Becker said only 20 babies were born in the entire county in 2021.
“Those 20 would be births that would occur in the emergency room, urgent care center, at someone’s home, in an ambulance, “Becker said.
Now, without care close by, Becker said it's putting lives at risk in Ashtabula County.
Ashtabula County resident and nurse Raquel Sawicki is due in February.
“I have concerns about when I go into labor, about how far I have to travel to get there. I’m just nervous that I won’t get there in time,” Sawicki said.
She has been going to Mya Women’s Center for parenting classes and support.
The center’s executive director, Judy Christen, founded the center in 2016. It’s served about 750 families to date.
“They’re women who are getting on with life. They’re out of school for the most part and they’re getting on with life, but it’s a struggle for them, Christen said. “Maybe financial struggles, maybe support struggles.”
Christen said since the closing of Ashtabula’s last Labor and Delivery Center, worry is evident among her patients about having to make the 45-minute drive out of the county to get to a birthing hospital.
“We just have more fear. That's the basic problem with our patients is they’re fearful. Even if they’re not first-time parents, they’re afraid of not making it to the hospital,” Christen said.
Christen also said that since that 2020 closing, she’s seeing another phenomenon among her clients—more C-sections.
“Because they can schedule those, they’re having more cesareans, they’re inducing labor,” Christen said.
Becker said there are currently no plans to reestablish a Labor and Delivery Unit in the county, and it’s a reality that’s not sitting well with him.
“I know I would want my wife in a situation where you, know my son, or my daughter was going to have the best shot and receive the best care. Right now, that is not the case. It’s not a safe situation the way things currently stand,” Becker said.
The Wehrleys said they’re planning to try to have another baby.
And as of right now, they’re going to have to chance taking that 35-minute drive from Medina to Fairview when it’s time to give birth to their child.
CLICK HERE to read more in News 5’s Delivering Better Results series.
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