By Rita McInerney

Sheila Wehunt gave birth to her baby girl, Niki, at 2:20 p.m., Nov. 9 in a birthing suite at St. Joseph's Hospital in Dahlonega.

"It's over Sheila," her doctor, Susanne Ashton, RSM, told her as she held up the small ping "miracle."

"You have a daughter."

Tony Wehunt smiled happily as he leaned over his tired young wife.

Doctor Ashton and the two nurses, Lyn Thompson and Becky Burnett, went swiftly about post-partum duties. The newborn, shortly to be weighed in at six and a quarter pounds, was placed on a padded table warmed by an overhead heating unit. After a few moments while she seemed to be pondering her abrupt passage from the warm, nurturing womb to a strange world, Niki shaped a small cry with her pretty little mouth.

Over the next four days, Dr. Ashton and her team delivered four more babies, putting to good use the attractive new labor and delivery area in the Catholic hospital in Dahlonega. Then, from 7 p.m., Nov. 15 to 5 a.m., Nov 16, Dr. Ashton and midwife Maggie Holley delivered four babies.

A Religious Sister of Mercy, Dr. Ashton and her partner, Dr. Jean Simone, deliver 18 or 19 babies a month. A second RSM, Sister Agnese Neumann, nurse practitioner, is the third member of the busy practice, Dahlonega Obstetrics/Gynecology Associates. Sister Agnese, according to her friend, Dr. Ashton, "Does everything we do, but deliver babies."

Dr. Ashton and Sister Agnese left a "huge and thriving practice" in Leonardtown, MD, to open a practice for women in Lumpkin County and surrounding counties in May 1989.

"When the Religious Sisters of Mercy decided to sponsor a hospital here, we knew there was a need. We decided we could take this on as a mission," Dr. Ashton says.

"We wanted to provide for the rich and the poor, no matter who they are, with the same type of medical care, in an office setting rather than in a clinic."

Dr. Simone had been practicing at the now-closed federal clinic in Dahlonega before joining up with the Mercy sisters. She is currently on leave after having her third child. Mrs. Holley, a midwife from Baltimore, is helping out until she returns.

The women doctors are the only Ob-Gyn specialists in Lumpkin County and "as far as we know," the only ones who accept Medicaid patients in both Lumpkin and Dawson counties. They also care for women from Hall and White counties.

Catholics are estimated to be only one percent of the 15,000 Lumpkin County and 7.751 (1988 figure) Dawson County populations.

After 18 months of work in the doctor's building on the hospital grounds, they are seeing some women returning with a subsequent pregnancy. With the growth of the practice, they have blueprints and dreams for their own building in the hospital complex. Dr. Simone's husband, Dr. Terry Bell, pediatrician, would join them.

They make it clear to poor patients that they must first obtain medical assistance cards. They are, Dr. Ashton says, "easily available to pregnant women in Georgia." She believes this helps instill a sense of responsibility, especially in the teenagers. Some of their patients are as young as 13 and 14.

Although most of their patents are unmarried, Dr. Ashton says "our mix is changing. While we're still getting a large number of poor, unmarried women, we're now getting more married women."

Now "that the word is getting out that we are pro-life," they have few problems with girls coming to them seeking abortions. If that's what a patient believes she wants, they will discuss alternatives, mention the large number of couples yearning to adopt infants.

About once or twice each month they deliver babies of women who "walk in off the street" to Emergency. This is difficult for the obstetricians, especially when a baby is premature and there is no medical history on the mother.

They are fortunate, Dr. Ashton admits, in the help they can count on from two Atlanta specialists. Dr. Paul Brown of Northside takes care of all their high-risk babies and is available for consultation "at any time of the day or night." Dr. Matthew Burrell, gyn/oncologist at St. Joseph's in Atlanta and Northside, will come to Dahlonega to operate when a woman requires surgery.

Both her roles, as physician and Religious sister, are important to Dr. Ashton. "You can bring compassion, caring, the love of God and also your professional capability for healing." Patents seem to sense this, she continues, holding up a handwritten four-page letter from a young woman mourning her stillborn infant.

In the letter she thanks Dr. Ashton for her care and compassion. "I could fee your heart ache for me. I know you really cared and I thank you for that. I needed a lot of love that day and you gave love straight from your heart."

Dr. Ashton and Sister Agnese are very much part of the team of six Mercy sisters associated with the Dahlonega hospital. "We are all fighting for the hospital's survival, providing health care that is not adequate or mediocre but good for everyone," the doctor explains.

The sisters are a close-knit group, getting together frequently to pray and celebrate feast days and special events.

Dr. Ashton values the dedication of the practice's nine-woman staff, particularly through the paycheck. "If we can't pay them just salaries there is no point in operating."

But the selflessness of the two Sisters of Mercy was something of a puzzle to the staff. It was hard for them, Dr. Ashton says, to understand why both doctor and nurse practitioner sent their checks each payday to their mother-house in Baltimore. Doctor Ashton explained to them about all the elderly sisters they were helping to take care of there.

Since graduating in 1978 from the University of Maryland Medical School, the oldest member of the class, Dr. Ashton estimates she's delivered 3,000 babies. That includes one set of triplets. She and Sister Agnese have been godmother to several, in churches of various denominations.

Sister Agnese says she doesn't let her fondness for young people affect her firmness in dealing with them. She is open to listening when her young patients need to talk about their lives.

Many, she says, whether eighth-grade dropout or college co-ed, "are searching, are spiritual," although not in the churchgoing way. Many "lack real love and the support of a family structure. Some of them have babies so they can have someone to love."

In dealing with such troubled girls, "I stick to my guns," she insists. "Most of them are just looking for someone to show them a right direction."

Sister Agnese gets angry over the "whole pro-choice thing. There is the choice not to get pregnant. It works both ways," she tells them. At present she is treating four young women who have contracted venereal disease.

Because so many girls and women today have multiple sex partners or abuse drugs, the three partners must "assume that everybody has AIDS and treat them with precaution."

Sister Agnese informs all her patients they will be screened for drugs without prior announcement. One such test showed the girl had smoked marijuana the day she was to deliver.

She and Dr. Ashton met and became friends in 1962 at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY, where both were seeking their master's in biology. She had always wanted to be a nurse, her friend a doctor.

Dr. Ashton's mother was an obstetrician in Baltimore. She gave up delivering babies only after she had her fifth child. Then she concentrated on teaching.

"She took care of the poor. She was a great woman," her daughter says. "I would go with her and stay in the car" while she was delivering babies. One time, the doctor says, she arrived at a poor home to find a poker game in progress on the ground floor while a woman suffered labor pains above. "She threw out the poker players," Dr. Ashton says with a smile.

Sister Agnese entered the Sisters of Mercy in 1947, Dr. Ashton 10 years later. Both had been taught by the sisters at Mt. St. Agnes High School in Baltimore. Both began teaching after getting undergraduate degrees at Mt. St. Agnes College.

Dr. Ashton, after teaching 10 years, earned a master's in health care administration and worked in hospital administration for 10 years. Finally she entered the medical School at the University of Maryland, her mother's alma mater, to study for her medical degree. Her specialty training in obstetrics and gynecology was taken at York Hospital in Pennsylvania. She was chief resident in that specialty in 1982.

Sister Agnese received her bachelor's in nursing at the University of Maryland Medical School. Her father had received his degree in pharmacy there.

She did an internship as a nurse practitioner at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore and she took her subspecialty training in obstetrics/gynecology at York Hospital.

Now, settled into and enjoying life in the north Georgia mountain community, the two Sisters of Mercy are bringing a special dimension of caring service to women of the region. St. Joseph's Hospital welcomes their skills.

"In these times when many rural areas have no physicians willing to deliver babies, we're very fortunate to have them," says Sister Frances Ann Cook, community relations director. "With their practice, together with our new birthing suites we feel we are offering wonderful care to mothers and their babies."