New birthing center at St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway opens in August, offers 'wraparound' care

New and growing families will pass an abstract painting of blues, greens, grays and tans when entering the new birthing center at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway. The color scheme echoes throughout the entire ninth floor, accenting couches, curtains and walls.

"It’s calming," Episcopal Health Services chief operating officer Karen Paige said of the soft hues. When the center opens to patients on Aug. 18 and the cries of newborns follow, a little calm may be welcome relief.

Construction on the nearly $12 million project began in May 2024 with the demolition of the floor, which used to be administrative offices and a wound treatment center. The costs include outfitting the facility with new equipment.

The hospital serves the Rockaways and the Five Towns and, with the new facilities, administrators hope to draw more mothers-to-be from Nassau County.

"The delivery of this unit for Rockaway, the Peninsula, the Five Towns is essential because we want to be the provider of choice," Paige said. "People should not have to leave the community in which they live to seek the best medical care and I think the unit has been designed with having that patient-centered experience at the forefront."

Mothers in labor will enter one of the center’s triage rooms before being moved to one of the six labor rooms. The center also has two operating rooms to perform caesarian sections and a post-anesthesia care unit room.

The new labor rooms are spacious and designed to bring in family members. Each room has a foldout couch for someone to spend the night, a mini fridge and shower. The views bring Long Beach and the ocean into sight, as well as the Manhattan skyline on a clear day.

Along with the facilities is a new model for the care of mothers and their newborns they call "Labor Delivery Recovery Postpartum," said Dr. Jacqueline Marecheau, chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Episcopal Health Services.

Marecheau said their services begin with prenatal care and continue up to 12 months following birth.

"It provides complete wraparound services; it involves the family," Marecheau said. "It's essentially very person-centered in the approach on designing this space. What we took into account ... is what the patient wants, what the patient needs."

That includes the possibility of delivering in the shower, she said, complete with waterproof monitors.

"They'll experience being able to have a wireless monitor and potentially deliver in our large showers if they want it," Marecheau said. "Not having to go from one room into another room to actually have your baby or being separated by your baby is something that is going to be game changing.

"If you're in a spa and you're in the bathroom and you have jets on them, water tends to be a very soothing experience for a lot of people," Marecheau said.

The new birthing center has been more than 12 years in the making, said EHS chief executive Dr. Donald T. Morrish, who is an obstetrician by training.

"Back over 12 years ago, the facility was outdated and as we know, as a patient, you have choices of health care systems and they were migrating off of the peninsula to other hospital systems," Morrish said.

The hospital serves a community of 140,000 people on the peninsula, according to Morrish, but also draws from the surrounding areas including the Five Towns. 

"Twenty years ago when I first started out in the area itself, all the babies went to the nursery and stayed in the nursery," Morrish said. "Now we do rooming in, where moms can see their babies 24 hours a day and take care of them and have that bonding experience, not just with mom, but also their partners and individuals that come in and get to see the baby itself."