By Susan Redden

sredden@joplinglobe.com

CARTHAGE, Mo. — It’s uncertain when the first baby will be born at the new McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital, but the new arrival can expect lots of gifts.

Workers at the hospital joined in a baby shower Thursday morning. The hospital’s new Spradling Family Birthing Center then was shown to the public at an open house Thursday night.

“The employees are so thrilled, they wanted to do something for the first new baby,” said Pam Barlet, director of community relations for the hospital.

The center will open Tuesday in the new hospital, which opened in January. Offering obstetric services to local families is an important element of the new hospital, said Bob Copeland, executive director.

“With it, we’ll be able to provide all the services the community needs,” he said.

It was 22 years ago when the last baby was born at the former McCune-Brooks Hospital in central Carthage.

The new center has four private rooms designed to allow mothers to deliver, recover and bond with their new babies in the same environment. The rooms are large enough for family members to stay with the mother, and they feature a Jacuzzi, a flat-screen television set and a refrigerator.

The center also includes a nursery and rooms for surgery.

Dr. Elizabeth Barlet, one of three physicians who will staff the childbirth center, said she was attracted “by the state-of-the-art facilities, and because of the philosophy and plans for the new center, which are very patient- and family-oriented.”

“I also wanted to be in on the start of a new program offering comprehensive women’s health care,” she said.

Barlet, who was born at the old McCune-Brooks, has returned to Carthage to join the Physicians for Women’s Health group at the hospital. A graduate of Carthage Senior High School and Missouri Southern State University, she received her medical degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The group includes two other female physicians, Dr. Maritza Manrique Kiniry and Dr. Lydia Kensler.

Kiniry, a graduate of the School of Medicine of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, said she was attracted by the hospital and by the opportunity “to practice in a hometown atmosphere.”