VALLEY CITY, (AP) - Valley City officials are trying to get their hospital to keep delivering babies.

Mercy Hospital is scheduled to close its obstetrics unit in January. Hospital officials cite declining birth numbers and mounting financial losses. Mercy still will provide prenatal and postnatal services and emergency deliveries.

The North Dakota Healthcare Association says 10 of North Dakota's 43 licensed community hospitals deliver babies.

The number has dropped because of a decline in births, officials say. At the same time, services have become more complex as premature and C-section births rose in recent years, said Dennis Lutz, chairman of the University of North Dakota medical school's obstetrics-gynecology program.

"Small-town hospitals are asking themselves, 'For two or three or four deliveries a month, is it worth having all these resources and all this equipment and all the liability?'" Lutz said.

Some believe the Mercy administration has underestimated the costs to the community of the obstetrics unit closing.

Mayor Mary Lee Nielson worries it will send the wrong message while the community is trying to attract young professionals. She and about 20 other city government and business leaders met with Mercy officials Friday to try to get them to change their minds. They were disappointed, but Nielson said they are not giving up.

Steven Welken, a board member of the Valley Development Group, said he and others floated the idea of raising private funds to keep the unit open, hoping an increase in young professionals might reverse birth rate trends down the road.

"Even though the city and business leaders have asked to reconsider and are willing to help investigate alternatives, they will not change their stance," said Welken, whose baby is due in November.

In a letter to the Valley City Times-Record, one of the four physicians who provide OB-GYN services at Mercy, Brad Braunagel, said the hospital has not done enough to promote its OB services and create a work environment that would help retain nurses.

"It's very frustrating for me, the board and the physicians, but the stakes are too high," said interim administrator John Osse about the decision. "The only alternative is to keep the department and risk losing the whole thing."

Osse said the number of deliveries at Mercy dropped from 101 10 years ago to 68 last year. In 2007 alone, the OB department cost the hospital $320,000, he said. At a time of a nationwide shortage, the department also is struggling to recruit and retain nurses; the hospital has brought in outside nurses to cover 54 of the department's 68 shifts, which costs more than hiring full-time professionals.

Osse said that though the hospital as a whole lost money last year, it enjoys relative financial stability. Keeping the OB department will threaten that stability, he said.

Valley City State athletic director BJ Pumroy, whose second child is due Jan. 13, worries about having to drive on Interstate 94 to Jamestown or Fargo in January. "It could be a blizzard, and we could be in a world of hurt," he said.

Osse said a one-time financial boost or the arrival of more nurses alone won't help the OB department in the long run. "Now if you give me more babies, that would work - but I mean a lot more," he said.