What life-threatening emergency did Katie Gowell face during her home birth — just weeks after Houlton's maternity ward shut down?
Twenty-nine days after Houlton Regional Hospital closed its labor and delivery department, Katie Gowell went into labor at home with her fifth child and suffered a prolapsed cord — a dire obstetric emergency in which the umbilical cord slips out before the baby. When her water broke, approximately eight inches of cord were found hanging into the toilet. Her doctor, Dr. Rose Fuchs, immediately recognized the situation as life-threatening: the cord is the baby's sole blood and oxygen supply, and it risked being compressed by the descending baby's head.
What is a prolapsed cord?
A prolapsed umbilical cord occurs when the cord slips through the cervix and into the vaginal canal ahead of the baby. Because the descending baby's head can compress the cord, it cuts off the blood and oxygen supply to the fetus. The standard of care requires the patient to be in surgery within 5 to 10 minutes of diagnosis — making immediate hospital access absolutely critical.
The situation unfolded in the starkest possible terms: Dr. Fuchs had to maintain her position manually — holding the baby's head off the cord — for nearly 90 minutes while emergency services were mobilized. That duration is far beyond the 5-to-10-minute surgical window that best practice demands. During surgery, the baby's heart rate dropped to 90 beats per minute, well below the normal range of 120 to 160, a reading described by physicians as a signal of impending disaster. Life Flight, Maine's air ambulance service, was eventually involved in getting Gowell to Eastern Maine Medical Center for emergency care.
The story illustrates with brutal clarity what the loss of a local labor and delivery unit means in practice. Houlton Regional Hospital gave only one month's notice before closing its maternity ward — and within a single month, a woman in the region faced exactly the scenario that proximity to obstetric care is designed to prevent. You can hear the full account, including the details of Dr. Fuchs's intervention, on This American Life via Listenly.
"I couldn't help but notice that nobody in the military seemed to care how everyday citizens were experiencing all this."
— This American Life, Episode 894: "I Couldn't Help but Notice" (August 2026)See also
Labor and delivery departments have been vanishing across rural America as birth rates decline and hospitals struggle to recruit staff and turn a profit. Houlton Regional Hospital closed its unit with only one month's notice, leaving expectant mothers in the region without local maternity care.
Giant helicopters approached the area around 8 p.m., disgorging paratroopers who clambered down ropes onto the roof of the former St. Luke's Hospital. Residents had been given almost no warning — the public was informed only six minutes before the announcement.
Rick Cole received a text from the police chief just six minutes before the public announcement stating that military exercises would take place at St. Luke's Hospital, but instructing officials not to reveal the location. Cole decided the public had a right to know and posted it anyway.