“I felt like my own family was taking care of me.”
Mollie and Billy Lewis live in Wilmington, but drove to Columbus County to have a baby.
Mollie, 34, a medical esthetician and assistant, had been a patient of Martyn Woleben, M.D., a participating gynecologist at the CRHS Birthing Center, for close to nine years. “I followed him from Elizabethtown when he had a practice there,” Mollie says. “He delivered my first two girls via cesarean sections.”
After living in Wilmington for nearly three years – ever since she married Billy, a 38-year-old film and video producer — Mollie and Billy knew they wanted a baby together and explored OB/GYN options in Wilmington.
“I finally became pregnant and had established an OB,” Mollie says. “At about eight weeks pregnant, I visited that OB's office to check the heartbeat and was unsuccessful at finding one. They scheduled a follow-up appointment for four weeks and let me go. I worried something wasn't right and had a 3-D ultrasound done locally at about nine weeks, and it didn't look like a successful pregnancy.”
She called her new OB, who couldn’t see her for two to three weeks. It was then that Mollie reached out to Dr. Woleben, MD for help.
“I was so upset,” she recalls. “I called Dr. Woleben the next morning and explained the situation. They asked if I could I come in at 11 that morning.”
Dr. Woleben determined the pregnancy wasn’t viable, and Mollie had a D&C (dilation and curettage).
“After that experience, I knew, with the next pregnancy, there wouldn’t be a question of where we would go, even if it meant a long drive each way,” she says. “It would be worth it. I felt like a number in Wilmington. In Whiteville, I feel like Dr. Woleben’s only patient.”
Six months later, the Lewises were pregnant again. Dr. Woleben confirmed the happy news when he heard a healthy heartbeat.
Etta Ford Lewis joined her big sisters, Eva (age 7) and Elizabeth (age 6), and her parents last March.
“I felt like a celebrity arriving at Columbus Regional,” Mollie reports. “They were ready and awaiting my arrival. I had a scheduled C-section with two of the best anesthesiologists ever – not to mention the ease of having an incredible surgeon who knows my body literally inside and out!”
She said she felt nothing during the surgery and describes her recovery as “amazing," going on to tell how she wasn't nauseated or in pain the first time she held Etta.
“That’s a moment I will cherish forever,” she said. “I had not experienced that with my older two.”
“After C-sections, you’re normally by yourself in recovery while everyone else gets to hold your baby,” she adds. “But not at CRHS. I loved that, after ten long months, I could study Etta and love her and help her nurse.”
It had been five years since Mollie had nursed a baby, and she said the “incredible nurses” reminded her how it’s done and about how important it is.
“I had forgotten a lot of things, but they were there to help me in all ways possible.”
She says the entire staff went “above and beyond” and gives everyone “five stars.”
“Having a third child is definitely a game-changer,” she says. “Etta actually has three moms in our home. Her big sisters, Eva and Elizabeth, absolutely adore her. Life is busy, but I signed up for that!”
Big sisters Eva and Elizabeth
Mollie and Billy literally drove past their hometown hospital on the way to Whiteville. Mollie says if they ever have “that boy” they sometimes dream about, they’ll be back at CRHS.
“I can guarantee I had the best treatment there,” Mollie says. “I felt like my own family was taking care of me.”
