Deliver a Baby Week offers first-year medical students a unique glimpse into an ob/gyn career

“Have you ever wanted to help deliver a baby?”

This is one of the main questions members of the OB/GYN Interest Group pose to first-year medical students at Brown as part of the aptly named Deliver a Baby Week. The annual initiative not only grants a firsthand look into the third-year obstetrics and gynecology rotation, it sometimes even changes the lives of its participants.

For this year’s Deliver a Baby Week in April, 30 students shadowed nurse-midwives and doulas in four-hour shifts at the Brown University Labor and Delivery Center at Women & Infants Hospital. While the students have minimal responsibilities, interest group co-leader Parker Haddock MD’27 says they gain critical exposure to obstetrics before third-year rotations. The initiative is open to all students, including those who aren’t members of the interest group.

“We hold this during the transition week between clerkship rotations,” she says. “In general, there are less opportunities to shadow on a labor and delivery floor during your early years of medical school. A lot of that is because there just isn’t much space on the wards for preclinical students.”

“The interest far outweighs the capacity. Everyone is so eager for it,” adds Adri Corriveau MD’28, another co-leader of the interest group.

For most students, Deliver a Baby Week is the first time they will take part in the birthing experience. Whether or not they pursue ob/gyn, every student remembers their first birth, Haddock says. Midwives, anesthesiologists, and other clinicians guide first-year students through natural births, cesarean sections, and other dynamics driving the labor process.

“Something like the birthing process is so ubiquitous, so you have an opportunity to be exposed to different settings and patient populations,” Corriveau says.

Jane Kaull MD'28 says she first heard about the week from older students, including Silas Monje ’21 MD’25, who said it changed his “entire path through school.” 

“I gravitated toward that and ended up doing more research focused on maternal-fetal medicine, and I became interested in studying high-risk pregnancies and deliveries,” said Monje, now an ob/gyn resident at Columbia.

Kaull says she felt nervous and excited in the brief introduction sessions leading up to Deliver a Baby Week.

“We were paired with a partner going in at the same time,” Kaull says. “Walking in the door was still nerve-wracking, but the residents and midwives were all very helpful.”

Kaull followed two different women at the same time during her four-hour shift, shadowing doctors as they moved from room to room. She says she was fortunate to walk in just as one patient gave birth, and was also able to witness delivery of the placenta and other stages of aftercare. Now, Kaull says she is interested in gaining more experience in ob/gyn, and the experience reaffirmed her desire to bring positivity to patient care.

“It was special to be a part of what I would assume is the best day of their lives,” Kaull says. “I think that has inspired me to go into a field where I have more of those kinds of days. There are a lot of challenging aspects of medicine—whether it’s delivering bad news or things that simply don't go your way—so being able to watch the labor and delivery team create such a joyful moment for patients was an incredibly rewarding experience.”

While Estelle Yoo MD’28 still plans to pursue pediatrics, she also loved her front-row seat to the ob/gyn experience. The first delivery she observed was a C-section, which was also the first surgery she had ever seen.

“Once I was able to get past the initial wave of nausea, it was a beautiful moment,” Yoo recalls with a laugh. “I appreciated so many parts of the process. It was not only great seeing the doctors from anesthesia, pediatrics, and ob/gyn work together, but also ensuring that the mother was doing well and seeing the beauty of a new life.”

The next birth she saw was vaginal, and it further solidified her newfound respect for all of the specialists and surgeons on the labor and delivery floor.

“One thing I want to continue is having that same curiosity and openness to every part of medicine I encounter,” Yoo says. “I greatly appreciated the patient being OK with us learning during a time like that, too.”

Haddock thanked the staff of Women & Infants for their continued support of both the OB/GYN Interest Group and Deliver a Baby Week.

“This was definitely a highlight of my preclinical years, and that’s something we hear again and again every year,” Haddock says.