PHOENIX April 24, 2004 (By Carol Sowers, Arizona Republic) - Teresa Rivera learned about the opening of Phoenix Memorial Hospital's new $1.4 million birthing center on Spanish-language radio a few months ago.

Her second baby was due in March, and the 18-year-old liked what she heard. Baby showers for moms, new labor-delivery rooms and round-the-clock bilingual nurses to interpret for Hispanic patients like Teresa, who make up 67 percent of the hospital's clientele.

Abril Rivera, born March 5, was the third baby to debut in the remodeled center with its 10 labor and delivery rooms, high-tech bedside monitoring equipment and stylish marble bathrooms. The refurbished birthing center is a symbol of the troubled hospital's efforts to climb out of decline.

Vanguard Health Systems bought the 70-year-old hospital in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for $39 million in 2001, making it part of its 16-hospital network nationwide. But in the next year, the hospital's struggling maternity ward, which was delivering only about 23 babies a month, was closed, destined for a major overhaul.

Work didn't begin on the new birthing center until October 2002.

Open now for six weeks, there is little comparison between the new birthing center and the hospital's aging maternity ward. When it closed in September 2002, there were only four or five beds, all for low-risk pregnancies attended by midwives. Then, obstetricians were called in at the "last minute," said Lize MacDonald, the hospital's director of women's health.

Caesarean sections were done in an "operating room that had been cobbled together," she said.

Today, obstetricians and midwives work as a team, and C-sections are done in a modern operating room.

In the labor-delivery rooms, bedside OBLinks, not found in many hospitals, allow doctors to monitor a mother and baby from a home or office computer. And the nursery is open again.

That's where Fabronia de la Cruz, a tear running slowly down her cheek, held her first grandchild last week, 50 minutes after his birth by C-section.

In July, 26 recovery beds will open up, giving the center a capacity of about 300 births a month.

The renovation has been long and tedious.

"I felt like I was giving birth," said MacDonald, who was hired to oversee the construction. "It was painful."

But for Rivera, it's been more pleasure.

For her, Phoenix Memorial meant that she would get a checkup before her second baby was born, and that bilingual nurses would understand her.

Phoenix Memorial is an affiliate of Abrazo Health Care, Vanguard's name for its six Arizona hospitals. The name is meaningful, MacDonald said.

Abrazo is Spanish for embrace or hug.

"That's what we are here to do," MacDonald said, "embrace the community."