In 2007, a year before the nation’s economic nosedive, 2,042 babies came into the world at St. Charles Bend. It was a decade high for the hospital.

But the boom is now over. Mirroring trends in the state and nation, Central Oregon is experiencing a drop in birth rates.

Through November 2012, just 1,410 babies were born during the year at the Bend hospital. Mountain View Hospital in Madras went from 226 in 2007 to 134 through October 2012.

Both locally and nationally, experts have pinned the decrease at least in part to the languishing economy, as people have become more reluctant to take on the financial cost of parenthood.

“It’s really driven by the poor economy and high unemployment,” said Karen Shepard, chief financial officer for St. Charles Health System.

The birth rate, which is the annual number of births per 1,000 women in the prime childbearing ages of 15 to 44, is at its lowest nationally since tracking began in the 1920s, according to a Pew Research Center report released in November. For 2011, it was at 63.2 births per 1,000 childbearing women.

The well-known baby boom from 1946 to 1964 includes the nation’s highest birth rate since tracking began, which, according to the Pew report, was 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 1957. The report says the rate slipped down from that high but stabilized from the 1970s through 2007.

From 2007 to 2010, the number of U.S. births shrank by more than 300,000, the report says.

A St. Charles analysis of birth rates, Shepard said, shows that Central Oregon in the past five years has experienced a steeper drop than the state as a whole. While Oregon went from a birth rate of 66 per 1,000 to 60, Central Oregon slid from 76 per 1,000 to 61.

“We actually have had a bigger drop,” she said, “but we’ve had higher unemployment in Central Oregon.”

Central Oregon counties have experienced high unemployment during the recession. Crook County had the highest unemployment rate in the state from October 2008 through this past November, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

“If you talk to the economists, it’s going to be a very slow recovery,” Shepard said.

It wasn’t that long ago that St. Charles Bend expanded its birthing center, adding 12 rooms for a total of 26. The expansion was completed in 2007.

While the birthing suites at area hospitals are quieter these days, the slumping birth rate isn’t at present triggering significant changes.

St. Charles Health System will keep its birthing centers open in Bend and Redmond, as well as in Madras, which came under the St. Charles umbrella as of Tuesday.

The hospital system closed Pioneer Memorial Hospital’s birthing center in Prineville at the end of 2009. At the time, it cited a shortage of family practice physicians in the area and difficulty in recruiting new physicians.

Last summer, administrators at St. Charles brought up the possibility of closing the Redmond hospital’s birthing center as part of an overall, systemwide review of services provided at the organization’s hospitals.

Dr. Michel Boileau, the system’s chief clinical officer, said the idea was discussed in the context of a larger overview of the future of the St. Charles system. He said system leaders recognize that such discussions are sensitive for area communities and their hospitals.

“We had never made a decision to do that,” he said of closing the Redmond birthing center. “It was only part of a discussion in a much bigger context of St. Charles in a coordinated health care system, as opposed to simply a collection of regional hospitals.”

He said it might become a point of discussion in the future, but it’s not being talked about presently.

“It’s not our intention to move all deliveries to Bend right now,” he said.

St. Charles in 2005 commissioned a report on the birthing centers in Bend and Redmond that looked at both closing Redmond’s center and expanding its services. The hospital system at the time decided against any closure and subsequently renovated the center.

The number of babies delivered at St. Charles Redmond has increased in the last few years, although that jump is attributable in part to the closure of the Prineville birthing center. The number of babies born at the Redmond center went from 261 in 2007 to 255 in 2009, and to 335 as of the end of November for 2012.

In Madras, stopping deliveries isn’t even something that is on the table, Boileau said. Mountain View Hospital serves mothers traveling from the far reaches of Jefferson County and the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. The distances to Redmond or Bend would be too far.

In the meantime, St. Charles is investing in services for expectant mothers.

It recently added two more physicians to the Redmond obstetrics and gynecology staff. It’s also considering expanding its anesthesia services in Redmond, Boileau said. That would aid the birthing center as well as other parts of the hospital.

The birthing center in Bend recently added a second operating room. Boileau said that prevents rolling an expectant mother to the hospital’s main operating rooms when the birthing center room is occupied.

At some point, albeit perhaps a way down the line, birth numbers are expected to rise again in the region. The St. Charles system’s birthing centers at times serve mothers from as far away as Lakeview, John Day and Klamath Falls.