OBGYN North expands to add birthing center

OBGYN North will relocate to a larger facility in September where it will open a new birthing center that will operate in conjunction with the practice.

The new facility will be located on the third floor of the Medial Oaks Pavilion III building at 12221 Renfert Way, adjacent to St. David's North Austin Medical Center. The new location will have 7,000 square feet of space, which is 4,000 square feet more than the current office at 12201 Renfert Way. The birthing center, called Natural Beginning, will be geared toward women with low-risk pregnancies.

It will have three birth rooms, each with a full- or queen-sized bed and SaniJet birthing tub that women can use for a water birth or hydrotherapy for pain management, said Siobhan Kubesh, a certified nurse midwife with OBGYN North. She said women will have more choices for when they go into labor.

"There's more demand for options besides a hospital," Kubesh said.

The birthing center will be staffed with CNMs who are licensed by the board of nursing and have a master's degree in nursing with a specialty in midwifery. This allows CNMs to have hospital privileges so that they can travel with a patient who might need to be transferred to St. David's NAMC during labor, Kubesh said. The CNMs will also collaborate with OBGYN North's physicians so that a woman will not have to leave the practice if her pregnancy becomes high-risk.

OBGYN North was founded in 1982 by Dr. Margaret Thompson and was purchased in 2008 by Dr. Christina Sebestyen. Kubesh said it has always been part of Sebestyen's mission to offer a birthing center. Sebestyen used a midwife when she had her own children and wanted to make sure other women had that option available, Kubesh said.