Obstetrician delivered over 5,000 babies in 38-year career


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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — After welcoming more than 5,000 babies into the world, Billings obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Daniel Molloy has lost count of just how many people he's been the first person to wrap his hands around.

But he knows well the last one — Cayeton Harms, born Oct. 15, who was trundled into Molloy's office recently by his parents, Bernard and Erin, to check in with an obviously delighted Molloy.

Barring something unforeseen, Cayeton will be the last baby that Molloy ever delivers.

"This is a special guy. They had some (fertility) help getting this guy," said Molloy, who would, moments later, take the baby into his arms. "He was very hard-fought to get."

Molloy, 70, who's been delivering babies and caring for their mothers for 38 years, is retiring — at least from patient care — Dec. 2 from St. Vincent Healthcare's Big Sky OB/GYN. An open house to honor him was set for 3 to 6 p.m. Nov. 24 at the Mansfield Health Education Center.

Kelly Edwards is Rocky Mountain College's vice president for Institutional Advancement and the mother of two babies — A.C., 5, and Bella Rae, 3 — that Molloy not only delivered, but helped make possible with a referral to fertility specialists in Seattle.

"You bet I'll be there," she said ahead of the Nov. 24 open house.

After seven pregnancies, two of which resulted in A.C. and Bella Rae, Edwards said that Molloy and his colleague, Di Nagy, a Big Sky OB/GYN nurse practitioner who will remain at the practice, "have turned into family members," Edwards said. "I don't think they make them any better."

She recalled the moment while in labor with A.C. when Molloy gently told her to stop pushing. Without saying a word to Edwards — but in full view of her husband, Chris — Molloy calmly slid the umbilical cord, which was wrapped around A.C.'s neck, out of harm's way.

She also recalls the late-night text messages she sent to Molloy after being involved in an automobile accident during the 18th week of her pregnancy with Bella Rae. Invariably, Molloy would text right back, helping to allay her fears so she could get some rest.

"He is a real person who understands people," Edwards said. "He knows what people want and need to hear."

His impending retirement, she said with a smile, "has made up my mind not to try for a third child."

The early years

From 1967-71, Molloy received his medical training at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska. He then served two years in the U.S. Air Force as a flight surgeon. After that he practiced in California before coming to Billings in 1977.

"When I started, OB/GYN was a specialty and we did everything," he said. "Now as in every field there are sub-specialists" who treat everything from bladder control to high-risk pregnancies. "That has evolved, and I think for the better."

Imaging — CT scans, ultrasounds, magnetic resonance imaging — "really have made things easier," he said. "That's been a real advance, in my opinion."

But there's no substitute for the personal touch, "and for me that has been a large part of doing this," he said, tearing up not for the first time during a 45-minute interview. "The rewards I get are feeling like you do help people, and that can be something as little as reassuring somebody."

Some of the most important medical advances have come in the field of neonatology, he said.

"In my practice, we have seen a lot of babies that weighed in at 1 pound, and now they are normal little kids. That's not the way it was when I started," he said. "You might have had a priest there to baptize the baby. That's all that could be done."

It is "amazing," he said, to play the role he has played in so many births.

"Without sounding trite, it is a miracle to witness all the joy and happiness" present at the birth of a healthy child, he said. "There are fortunately rare times when it isn't that way, but it is something I have gotten better at — helping people when we see still births or babies born with bad defects, some of them lethal. For me, helping those people is almost as rewarding" as an uncomplicated birth.

He never uses the words "routine birth."

"There are no routine births, but there are uncomplicated births — thank God," he said.

A team approach

Erin Harms, Cayeton's mother, praised Molloy for his humanity and his patience.

"He answered all our questions — even the silly ones," she said with a laugh. "We had many random questions. Everyone in this office is very kind. You never feel like a number. It's always, 'Hi, Erin. Hi Bernie.'"

Molloy called Nagy, the Big Sky OB/GYN nurse practitioner, a "huge part of our success. She delivered for a lot of people I have never seen before, because they are her patients. She's amazing — a spitfire, with a lot of personality packed into her."

"They are professional," Bernard Harms said of the staff, "but fun-loving."

"The relationship between the two of them is awesome," Erin Harms said. "They can work together without talking, especially during the delivery. They both know what the other is thinking."

Molloy has some of the standard retirement goals in mind — reading some good books, playing some golf, cooking and traveling with his wife, Rhonda, and spending some time at their place on Flathead Lake.

"But I hope to not totally leave medicine," he said. He said he's in negotiations with St. Vincent Healthcare to become a mentor and develop protocols for midwives and nurse practitioners. "That would be part-time, with no direct patient care on my part. It sounds like a good transition, and it would only be for a while."

He's also considering, as many other retired physicians have done, helping out with the physician assistant program at Rocky Mountain College.

___

Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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