Obstetrician

Dr. Fitzpatrick Wilson, who headed the obstetrics and gynecology department at the former Provident Hospital, died June 25 of a blood infection and renal failure at Deaton Specialty Hospital and Home Inc. downtown.Dr. Wilson, 69, who lived in Owings Mills and West Baltimore during his career, was chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Provident from 1972 to 1977. He operated a private medical practice in the 5600 block of Park Heights Ave. from 1977 to 1988.A native of Trinidad, Dr. Wilson moved to New York as a teen-ager and graduated from City College of New York in 1953.

Dr. Anthony Francis DiPaula Sr., a cheerful Baltimore obstetrician and gynecologist who delivered thousands of babies during his 50-year career, died Sunday of chronic lymphocytic leukemia at the home of his daughter in Towson. He was 81.He was born and raised in Forest Park, the son of an Italian immigrant father who owned a North Avenue fruit store and insisted that his son would attend medical school and one day become a physician."His father, Antonio DiPaula, told him he would be a doctor, and that was it. He had no other choice in this world," said the daughter, Sue Ann Murphy, with a chuckle.

No one says new mothers have it easy. Nights spent waking up every two hours and days spent trying to figure out just why the baby is crying so much leave about 80 percent of new mothers physically exhausted, emotionally drained and despondent over their seeming inability to do anything well. Call it the baby blues.Most of these women feel better after two weeks, but 10 percent have a form of clinical depression that can last for many months. Mothers with so-called postpartum depression feel so sad, anxious and helpless that they have trouble taking care of the baby and themselves.

With the country in the midst of another baby boom, it's time to talk about one of the more insidious scams perpetrated on prospective parents: the myth of natural childbirth.You'd think that even the most dim-witted individual would sense there's nothing "natural" about a baby the size of a toaster inching down a birth canal with the circumference of a garden hose.Nevertheless, each year hundreds of thousands of soon-to-be moms and dads are ensnared in a con that goes like this:Sometime in the final months of the woman's pregnancy, it is suggested by her well-meaning but addled obstetrician (or the busy-body Earth Mother next door)

A former Columbia girl, born with cerebral palsy and delivered prematurely, has reached a $4.1 million out-of-court settlement in a medical malpractice suit..With cost-of-living increases from an annuity set up with that money, the settlement reached Monday could give Tracina Woods, now 13, up to $8.6 million during her lifetime, said her attorney, Kenneth C. Vogelstein of Baltimore."It's unusually large," said Mr. Vogelstein, who noted that many malpractice awards range between $200,000 to $2 million.

Dr. Zsigmund J. Toth, a Baltimore obstetrician and gynecologist who temporarily gave up his practice to sail the Atlantic Ocean, died Monday of heart failure at his Bolton Hill residence. He was 77.Against the advice of friends, Dr. Toth fulfilled a lifelong dream when he set sail in October 1971 with his family from Pier 4 in the Ishtar, a 42-foot ketch named for the goddess of fertility."This was something he wanted to do all of his life. So he gave his practice to a friend, and we were gone for nearly three years," said his wife, the former Helen Opuda of Girardville, Pa., whom he married in 1941.

I am always interested in saving women from unnecessary surgical procedures, so I was particularly intrigued by a recent piece of research that questions the need for routine episiotomies during childbirth.Sixty percent of American women who deliver their babies vaginally have an episiotomy. For first-time mothers, the figure is even higher -- some 80 percent have an episiotomy. To find out why this is, I spoke to Dr. Frank Witter, acting director of maternal-fetal medicine, and to nurse-midwife Lisa Summers, coordinator of nurse midwifery research at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Michele Middleton, 9 months pregnant, has been waiting more than an hour with 20 other expectant mothers to see the doctor at People's Community Health Center, near Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.The 18-year-old is unmarried and unemployed, and is about to have her first baby. Her due date is just four days away.The Baltimore resident said she doesn't mind waiting: "The doctors spend time with you, ask you if you have any problems."Ms. Middleton's recent wait was caused by a problem not unique to People's Community: The nonprofit clinic has no permanent obstetrician.

She ventured slowly down that shadowed laneNow bright with wonder and now dark with pain.The trembling thread of life stretched taut and thin,But softly then, new radiance filtered in.% -- Lydia AtkinsonSHORTLY before 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, my son Reeexecuted a rather nifty right-angle turn at the pelvis and successfully completed his 10-hour trip down the birth canal.My wife did all the work. I received half of the credit. When the boy pushed himself into the light, we both watched as our love miraculously multiplied, a strange and holy alchemy and geometry.