Dr. Beach steps out of delivery room

After 35 years and nearly 4,000 babies, Dr. Randy Beach has decided to step out of the delivery room and focus solely on women’s health.

Beach, who founded Alpine Women’s Center in Whitefish in 1998, said the decision to stop snipping umbilical cords wasn’t an easy one, but was ultimately the right decision.

“You want to go out on top, when your skills really are still top notch,” he said. “It was time for me. I’ve done this for years and years. It’s a young person’s game.”

A board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist, Beach said the long unpredictable hours were taking a toll on his well-being.

And although he will not deliver babies any more, he will provide other women’s health services as a gynecologist.

“My last delivery was three weeks ago, and it was a tough one,” he said. “It kind of cemented my decision.”

Beach, 64, grew up in Iowa and went to undergraduate and medical school at the University of Iowa.

“I actually was majoring in neurobiology and saw all the research money was going to M.D.s,” he said. “I thought I’d go get a doctorate and come back. But I just fell in love with obstetrics.”

From Iowa, he traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah, for his residency.

“Utah is a great residency for an OB/GYN. The people there have a lot of babies,” he said. “During a typical residency you might get 20 or 30 C sections. I must have done 200. Same with hysterectomies and a typical seven or eight. I did dozens.”

Another fun facet of Utah’s high birth rate was that he got familiar with the patients and their families. One father, a bishop at a local Mormon church, came back with his wife several times.

“He had passed out every time in the delivery room,” Beach said. “So we gave him some medication the fourth time he was there to keep him from passing out. He had four girls and was sure this one was going to be a boy. He stayed upright for the delivery, but then we told him it was another girl. This nice Mormon bishop says, ‘Aw s--t’ and passes out on the floor. He went down hard.”

Dads “went down like flies” all during Beach’s career. He was able to handle the sight of his wife, Rayne, as she gave birth to their three daughters: Lauren, Carsyn and Taylor.

“I’m surrounded, but at least I have a male dog,” Beach said.

After living 17 years in Utah, the air quality began to bother Rayne and the two moved to Whitefish. She is a family nurse practitioner at Glacier Medical Associates.

“It was tough to leave a practice with a few partners to start one with just me,” Beach said. “I was alone for four years but we’ve added more since then.”

The clinic added three other doctors — Mirna Bowden, Kathleen Lewison and Carrie Merril — so Beach is leaving the baby delivering in good hands. Alpine Women’s Center offers women’s primary care, obstetric and gynecological care and surgery.

Beach admits it has become kind of strange to see children he delivered out in the community working or playing tennis (he has helped coach the Whitefish High School girls tennis team for years), but he saw similar things in Utah.

“When I was there, more than once I delivered a baby’s baby,” he said. “I mean they were 17 and it may not have been planned, but their mothers trusted me enough that they came back.”

When not practicing, Beach is a hiker, golfer, tennis player and fly fisherman. But his life has revolved around women’s health and babies for 35 years, so that’s where most of his conversation leads.

“It’s a great feeling to see a kid you brought into the world out,” he said. “It used to be that your patients would age with you. It’s not quite like that any more for me.”

Beach has delivered children in parking lots, hallways of the hospital and for women so large they didn’t know they were pregnant until they came in for abdominal pain. But one of his favorite stories involves a couple with a relationship on the rocks.

“The guy calls 911 and they patch the call through to me. He said his wife was giving birth and already crowning. As he’s telling me this, he stops and yells ‘No! No!’ and I have to ask what’s going on. The dog had licked the baby! I tell him to get the dog out of there and I hear yipping and the door slam. Weirdly enough, the birth kind of reunited the couple. And the dog never left the baby’s side.”

While Beach will continue to provide health care to women, he will miss the connection he formed with families when bringing a new member into the world.

But after 35 years of surprise twins and dads dropping like toy soldiers to the ground in the delivery room, he said he thinks he’s earned a little break.