VALLEY CITY (AP) - The last scheduled baby to be born at Mercy Hospital in Valley City arrived Dec. 28 at 8:27 a.m.

Heather and Kevin Schudar of Cooperstown welcomed Hayden Thomas into the world last Sunday. The hospital obstetrics ward shuttered four days later.

Dr. Bradley Braunagel, a family medicine practitioner who delivered the baby, said the closing of Mercy Hospital's obstetrics ward leaves him worried about the effects distance and severe weather may have for expectant mothers in the area.

"I'm sad, very sad and disappointed that things didn't work out to where we could make things work," Braunagel said.

Braunagel said expectant mothers will still be able to get prenatal care at Mercy Hospital. But they will have to be referred to a doctor in Fargo or Jamestown for the final three to four appointments and delivery.

The North Dakota Healthcare Association said last fall that 10 of North Dakota's 43 licensed community hospitals deliver babies. Officials say the number has dropped because of a decline in births, and because services have become more complex.

Mayor Mary Lee Nielson and other city officials had tried to persuade Mercy officials to change their minds and keep the birth unit open. But Mercy officials said that would threaten the hospital's overall future.

Keeping the OB department would mean a risk of "losing the whole thing," former interim John Osse said earlier.

Osse said last fall that the number of deliveries at Mercy had dropped from about 100 to 68 in the past 10 years. In 2007 alone, he said, the OB department cost the hospital $320,000, at a time when it also struggled to find nurses.