RUMFORD – Since beginning his practice at Rumford Hospital two years ago, Dr. Rick Marden has delivered 40 babies in the Special Delivery Family Birthing Center; but the delivery there on Aug. 23 gave him a whole new perspective.

His colleagues on the birthing center team surrounded him and his wife, Raeanne, when their second child was born.

“It’s different to try to be just a support person, to try to keep from being a doctor,” Marden said. “But I knew she needed me as a support person more than as a doctor.” Dr. Dieter Kreckel, Marden’s colleague at Elsemore Dixfield Center, delivered Anna Sofia Marden.

When she learned that her physician, Laurie Ann Maitland, would be leaving the area just before her due date, Raeanne Marden thought about having her baby at Central Maine Medical Center where she could find another female doctor.

Her husband told her he thought she would be treated well at Rumford Hospital, and she elected to remain among the people she has come to know over the last two years.

“We felt spoiled,” she said. “The nurses seemed to know just when to come in when we needed something and not to disturb us when we didn’t need them.”

“We got more sleep this time,” added her husband. And their first child, Natalie, 2 1/2, spent the night with her parents. “The nurses spoiled her,” her mother noted.

“It was good that the nurses gave me hints about breast feeding, too,” Raeanne said. “They didn’t assume just because I was experienced with our first daughter and a doctor’s wife that I know everything.”

Dr. Marden will take some paternity leave, but not as much as he might like. He has other deliveries to make. He delivered a baby only days after Anna Sofia was born.