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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The new University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Women & Infants Center opened to patients Sunday, Feb. 21, and five babies were born before midnight in the new building. One of those five babies, La'Isaac Smith, was selected in a random drawing to receive a full, undergraduate tuition scholarship to UAB from the UAB Health System to commemorate his being among the first births in the new Women & Infants Center on its first day of operations.

La'Isaac's parents, Kwanetta Humphrey and Bruce Smith, were presented with the scholarship gift by UAB Hospital CEO Michael Waldrum, M.D., the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 22, as big sister Jakaila Humphrey admired her new brother.

Nearly a decade of planning and construction culminated Feb. 21 when approximately 150 patients moved into the new 430,000-square-foot UAB Women & Infants Center. The well-planned and rehearsed move went flawlessly, with the final patient arriving safely in the new building more than three hours ahead of schedule. The new center offers the full spectrum of women's services, including routine maternity care, high-risk obstetrics, gynecology, urogynecology, reproductive endocrinology and infertility services and the only gynecological oncology program in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi affiliated with a National Institutes of Health-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The $164 million Women & Infants Center represents UAB's commitment to improving the health and lives of the women and infants of its state and region. The patient and family-center facility is designed to feel more like a first-class hotel than a hospital while offering state-of-the art technology, including Alabama's only supratertiary NICU, the most modern C-section and post-anesthesia recovery suites, state-of-the-art patient-care rooms and technologically advanced communication and security systems. UAB also is the only Alabama women's center providing 24/7 access to in-house neonatology and high risk obstetrics physicians every day of the year.

About UAB

The UAB Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology provides comprehensive care for every stage of life - from routine gynecologic care, to childbirth, to menopause and beyond. Its physicians are leaders in their fields in a nationally ranked program dedicated to giving patients the best care available.

The UAB Division of Pediatric Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine provides comprehensive care, with neonatologists on site 24 hours a day 365 day per year, to care for pre-term babies and newborns with illnesses, including respiratory distress syndrome, neonatal infections, persistent pulmonary hypertension and other illnesses. This division, together with Children's Hospital of Alabama, operates the region's only Level IIIC Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, which, in addition to babies in need of this care who are born at UAB, also accepts referrals of infants from across the state, the nation and internationally.