After finding out they were going to have triplets - and then discovering that St. Charles Medical Center-Bend Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was losing its neonatologist - the Gallaghers decided they had to go out of town to receive care.

Early Thursday morning Thomas and Ellen Gallagher’s longtime dream of becoming parents came true.

The Bend couple had triplets, delivered by Cesarean section at Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital in Vancouver, Wash., more than 150 miles from home.

Because of the high-risk nature of the pregnancy and birth, the Gallaghers moved temporarily to a hotel in Portland in January to be closer to their physician in Vancouver. The St. Charles Medical Center-Bend Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is currently not able to care for triplets because the hospital does not have a neonatologist on staff and hasn’t since Dr. Allen Merritt left the area at the end of last year.

His departure meant the hospital dropped from a level IIIb to a level IIb neonatal intensive care unit and the tiniest babies, those born before 32 weeks gestation, and women with certain high-risk pregnancies, could no longer be delivered in Central Oregon.

The Gallaghers said when they heard Merritt was leaving to take a professorship at Loma Linda University in California, the news terrified them, as they had recently learned they were expecting triplets after successful in vitro fertilization.

”We know St. Charles is working hard to replace (Merritt),” Thomas Gallagher, 45, said. ”This was just a little window, and we just happened to fall inside this window.”

Tim Bricker, executive vice president for Cascade Healthcare Community, the parent company of St. Charles hospitals in Bend and Redmond, said the hospital group is recruiting for two neonatologists to meet the need of the growing community, but has not yet hired anyone to replace Merritt. When Merritt left, the hospital group said it could take six months to recruit a replacement. ”We are in active recruitment and negotiations with neonatologists at this point. There is not a lot of detail I can share at this point,” Bricker said. ”We hope to have good news sooner rather than later.”

The facility is still able to handle most births that occur after 32 weeks of gestation, but Bricker said some high-risk pregnancies that go beyond 32 weeks might still be sent out of the area, often to Portland or Eugene, for care. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks.

”The fact that this is a triplet birth makes it, by definition, a high-risk birth. Because it was triplets, we wouldn’t be able to care for them here,” Bricker said.

The hospital is in the process of expanding its Family Birthing Center and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in a project that is under construction and expected to be completed by the end of the year, Bricker said. But with Central Oregon’s rapid population growth, administrators predict the addition will be full the day it opens.

Dr. Carey Winkler, a maternal/fetal health specialist with the Legacy Center for Maternal-Fetal Medicine said since Merritt’s departure, his hospital system is seeing one or two patients a month transferred from the Bend and Redmond area for care.

Knowing they would need to leave Central Oregon for the birth of their children, the Gallaghers said they began researching possibilities and were put in touch with Winkler by their Bend obstetrician/gynecologist.

”It was very stressful. We suffered some anxiety until we saw what we saw over here,” Thomas Gallagher said. ”It’s an amazing place.”

Winkler, they said, suggested the couple move across the Columbia River from their Portland hotel room to a motor coach near the Vancouver hospital when Ellen, 40, reached 32 weeks of gestation at the beginning of March. The traffic on the Interstate 5 bridge between Portland and Vancouver can get backed up, Thomas said, making it difficult to get to the hospital quickly if necessary.

”With triplets, the big concern is pre-term delivery, and it’s important for people when they deliver pre-term to be at the site when there is an intensive care nursery,” Winkler said. ”The risk of transporting a small baby can worsen their outcome. If you are talking about transporting three small babies, that is logistically a nightmare.”

As it is, the birth of the Gallaghers’ triplets Thursday morning went well, Winkler said. Ellen will be hospitalized for at least four days to recover from the C-section and the whole family should be headed home to Bend within a week.

Thomas, who is an executive in the medical device industry, said he has been able to work from Vancouver and Portland through phone and e-mail communication, but will need to get back to his office soon. The couple is looking forward to returning home with their new family – Trey Ryan, Joy Ellen and Thomas Gallagher V – and said they are still looking for a good nanny to help out.

”We’re really excited about it,” Ellen said. ”We’re really thrilled.”