With a community that’s busily growing, the number of babies born at Surrey Memorial Hospital is also on the rise. Our teams in the Family Birthing Unit (FBU) now deliver more than of 4,500 precious babies each year. In fact, they’ve even broken new records this year for the most babies ever delivered in one month – 395 in January and 410 in July!

With all this activity at B.C.’s second busiest maternity unit, this past spring was the perfect time to open a second dedicated operating room in the FBU for Caesarean sections. The new OR is already creating faster access for women experiencing complications of labour, or those who need a planned Caesarean section because of their own health or concerns about the baby’s. Today, new moms can feel even more confident and secure in having the best quality of care at one of the most important times of their lives. At the same time, our medical teams take great pride in this new state-of-the-art OR.

“The Family Birthing Unit has undergone massive positive changes over the last five years,” says Dr. Darren Lazare, head of Obstetrics and Gynecology.   “With the new operating space, we’ve been able to add a second on-call obstetrician, a 24/7 anesthesiologist and seven new obstetric gynecologists – all leaders in the field.”

The benefits are immense, he explains. As well as rapid access to Caesarean sections or epidural pain control for women giving birth, the changes have made it possible to increase gynecological surgery at Surrey Memorial Hospital by 50 per cent.

Your donor dollars have gone a long way towards expanding services – thanks to you we feel pride that our community is so well served in the maternity centre at Surrey Memorial Hospital.