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ourdan Surgeon, 18, wants to be a pediatrician. She is taking time this year, her junior year at Tualatin High School, to volunteer at Meridian Park Medical Center and learn more about her chosen career. To Surgeon, it’s a logical step in her career path. For other staff at Meridian Park, it’s a poetic homecoming. Eighteen years ago, Jourdan Surgeon was the first baby born at Meridian Park’s then-brand-new Family Birth Center.

Dr. Anton Broms was Lori Surgeon’s obstetrician. When he got the call that Jourdan was on the way, he told Lori to come to Meridian Park, a convenient drive from the Surgeons’ Fox Hills home. Broms worked for Women’s Healthcare Associates, a small group of OB/GYN doctors. When Meridian Park opened its birth center, WHA moved their office to Meridian Park. He says the

businesses are “connected at the hip.” “We rely on them to provide the serv-ices they do at the hospital” like nurses and education for new mothers, Broms said. In exchange, Women’s Healthcare Associates brings in the patients. The group has 14 employees at the Meridian Park office, which is connected to the hospital with a convenient sky bridge.

The day Surgeon was born, Hester Carr was a nurse at the hospital. She remembers the moment the phone rang and the staff heard that the first birth was on its way.

“We flipped a coin to see who got to take care of her,” Carr said. She won. Meridian Park’s birth center was designed to keep a small, homey feel, so families don’t feel lost and nameless in a huge hospital. This year, the Family Birth Center delivered its 22,000th baby, but it

still strives to feel like a manageable place.

The “family feel” appeals not just to patients, but also to the people who work there.

“I’m very impressed with the commu-nity,” said Patricia Solis, manager of the birth center. Solis moved to Meridian Park from a small-town hospital. She expected Meridian Park to be like most hospitals: regular turnover of nurses, moving to other hospitals in the metro area. “I was shocked that people stay here as long as they do. It’s unusual keeping nurs-es in the same system that long,” Solis said. She, too, describes the birth center as having a “small-town feel.”

“People work here for a long time because it’s a nice place to work,” said Carr. Carr was promoted to manager of the birth center after being a nurse for a

few years. Now she’s an educator, pro-viding care and training at several of Legacy’s locations.

The family feel of Meridian Park extends beyond the doors of the birth center: Carr enjoys that she knows the co-workers she passes in the hallways, a feature not common at bigger hospitals. Jourdan Surgeon volunteers in the emergency department, making beds and taking out laundry. Even a few weeks into her assignment, she got to know her fellow workers.

“We all get along, and they’re really open to telling me about their jobs,” Surgeon said.

Surgeon doesn’t know where she’ll go to college, or where she’ll go after that. But the people who work at the Family Birth Center hope she’ll come back to Meridian Park.

“She’s a special person in the history of this place,” Carr said.

FIRST BABY — Lori Surgeon watches her daughter, Jourdan, who is a volunteer at Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center, remove laundry from an emergency room. Jourdin was the hospital’s first baby born when the Family Birth Center opened for business on Oct. 5, 1993.