SALT LAKE CITY — At a party being thrown in OB-GYN Vicki Macy's honor Thursday, five young children stumbled shyly over to her, carrying sunflowers.

The Salt Lake doctor had delivered all five of them.

In fact, Macy, who was the first woman to be admitted to the OB-GYN residency at the University of Utah and one of the first female OB-GYNs in the state, has delivered more than 9,000 babies in her 40-year career.

That includes:

• All 22 grandchildren in one local family (five came to the party)
• Several Utah Jazz players
• Enough babies to fill 375 kindergarten classes, 1,000 baseball teams and 409 cheerleading squads. In a few weeks, the trailblazing doctor is hanging up her stethoscope and moving to Washington, along with her husband, to open a women's clinic. But at the celebration at LDS Hospital, multiple generations of families gathered to honor the woman who had brought them into the world.

Salt Lake resident Lindsey Hannay, her two kids in tow, said she's been seeing Macy since she was 16. Macy treats not only Hannay's mother and grandmother, but also delivered Hannay, her sister and her sister's four children.

Four years ago, Macy also delivered Hannay's 4-year-old son, Peter.

Hannay begins crying immediately when she recalls that event. After a nearly perfect pregnancy and labor, Hannay gave birth to Peter and then began hemorrhaging.

Macy remembers that moment just as clearly.

"We thought maybe she had a tear somewhere, there was no tear," Macy said. "We did everything we could think of to get that stopped, and we could not get it stopped."

Hannay came to as she was being wheeled to surgery. All she knew was that she had just delivered a baby — and that she was scared for her life. Looking up, she said, the first face she saw was Macy's.

"The rock"

In the Labor & Delivery unit at LDS Hospital, Macy is "the rock of our unit," said nurse manager Melanie Longmore. "When she's not around, people say, 'What would Dr. Macy do?'"

Part of what makes Macy special, Longmore said, is a certain "fire."

That fire has probably been with Macy since at least fourth grade, which is when she decided she wanted to be an OB-GYN.

She studied zoology and chemistry in college, put off medical school after she got married, and became a successful teacher in California and Oregon for several years.

But a magazine article about a 52-year-old mother of seven who went back to medical school inspired Macy to revive her childhood dream.

At the time, Macy was in her early 30s and had two young children. She spent a year retaking her courses (and acing them) and applied to the University of Oregon medical school at age 32.

"I got in, and then I was on my way," she said.

Macy was one of a dozen women in her class of 115 students.

Four years later, she got into her first choice of residency programs — the OB-GYN residency at the University of Utah — and moved to Salt Lake City. Macy was the first woman to gain admission to the program, she said.

"I felt like, 'Gosh, I have to do a really good job, because if I don't, they'll never take another woman,'" Macy said. "It seemed like I kind of had that weight on my shoulders."

She often poked fun at her male colleagues, who were at times blissfully oblivious to some of the challenges she faced as a woman in medicine.

Once, when the department chairman told all the residents to wear ties for their class picture, Macy showed up with "the most obnoxious tie I could find," she said.

In the photo, Macy is in front, flanked by 15 male classmates. Although you can't tell because the photo is black and white, she's wearing a blue shirt, a blue skirt and one truly garish orange tie.

Women's clinic

In 1986, Macy concocted a plan with Mary Beard, the only other female OB-GYN in Utah, to open a women's clinic in Salt Lake City.

LDS Hospital gave them their first loan — "with some trepidation."

"I remember when Dr. Beard and I were signing the documents, the guy said, 'I hope this works, because we don't know whether it's going to,'" Macy laughed.

Both she and Beard have worked at Avenues Women's Center ever since, up until 15 months ago, when University of Utah Health Care scooped up Macy.

The hospital labor and delivery staff talk about Macy in loving and at times awestruck tones.

"She has an innate gift," said Longmore, the nursing manager, who noted Macy's legendary ability to massage a baby who is face-up into the right position for delivery.

"She never loses her cool," said Jean Aldous, an LDS Hospital nurse who has worked with Macy for 14 years. She relayed that Macy can perform a forceps delivery without causing tearing or harm to the mother.

They also said Macy was practicing some techniques years before they became common practice in delivery rooms, including skin-to-skin contact — also called "kangaroo care" — which involves having the mom hold the baby to her bare chest for several hours a day. "Kangaroo care" has been proven in recent years to help stabilize the baby's heart rate and breathing pattern, and it's now widely practiced in NICUs.

But they said what really makes Macy stand out is that she's always there for her patients — at every birth, and often after. It's why patients over the years have placed their mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters in her care.

"I loved her instantly. She just made me feel calm," said Salt Lake resident Pamela Okumura, who said Macy was her first and only obstetrician.

At Macy's retirement party on Thursday, Okumura blinked back tears. Over the years, Macy has delivered Okumura's son, Okumura's daughter and, most recently, her daughter's two children.

"I feel like I'm almost losing a mother," she said. "It never even dawned on me I'd need to find a new OB until now."

Like a mother, Macy is as loving as she is stern, Okumura said. She recalled how she and her husband went to see Macy about surgical birth control options for women after having their second child.

"Dr. Macy looked right at my husband and said, 'Absolutely not. There's so many more complications for a woman. You're doing it!'" Okumura said, laughing.

Over the years, Macy has helped Okumura's family through its hardest and most vulnerable moments, including her daughter's first, unplanned pregnancy and the difficult labor and delivery that followed.

If there were one message she'd want Macy to have, Okumura said, it would be, "Thank you for being there."

Calming influence

Hannay begins crying immediately when she starts talking about what happened once she regained consciousness, four years ago.

"What's happening?" she asked Macy, as she realized she was being wheeled into surgery.

"I don't know," Macy replied calmly. "But we're going to the OR to find out."

"Lindsey was so young," Macy said later, recalling the moment. "And I had delivered her. And I thought, 'She was her mom's last baby, she was so darling.'"

"At that time, I didn't know if she was going to be fine," she continued. "But my determination is just one of those things. I mean, you're just determined. You just think, 'I cannot lose this young woman.'"

Hannay, now entering the operating room, asked if she was going to be put to sleep. Someone said yes. Hannay decided to focus on Macy's voice.

Then she felt a sense of peace wash over her.

In the months to come, Hannay would undergo eight hours in surgery that involved an emergency hysterectomy and, at one point, arresting on the table. She would endure an extended ICU stay, during which she could only see her son through FaceTime and photos, and then battle heart failure for another year and a half. But, eventually, Hannay would return home to her newborn son and husband and even adopt a 2-year-old girl, Brooklyn. The couple now has a third child on the way.

But at that moment, Hannay couldn't have known that.

At that moment, all she knew was that Macy was by her side.

"I looked at her and I felt so confident I was going to be OK," Hannay said. "I just felt safe. And I knew I was going to hold my baby."

Daphne Chen is a reporter for the Deseret News and KSL.com. Contact her at dchen@deseretnews.com.

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