HARLINGEN – “She’s having my baby! What a beautiful way to show me that you love me …” That iconic song by Paul Anka seems to resonate well with Dr. Uvaldo Cantu, who has been delivering babies for more than 30 years.
“I love delivering babies and taking care of women during their pregnancies,” said Cantu, an obstetrics and gynecology specialist.
“I was born in Weslaco and went to Weslaco schools,” said Cantu, 65, who is an attending physician and chief of staff at Valley Baptist Medical Center.
“I did my pre-med at Texas A& M University, and then I went to medical school at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas,” he said. “And then I did my OB/GYN residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.”
So what interested him in obstetrics and gynecology?
“The fact that I can be like a primary care doctor because I take care of patients on a day-to-day basis doing annual examinations, thyroid, hypertension, diabetes, that kind of thing,” he said. “I can also be a surgeon who can do all kinds of OB/GYN surgery including the robotics and all the fancy stuff that’s being done today.”
He’s seen lots of changes in medicine during his decades of practice.
“OB/GYN surgery has become minimally invasive,” he said. “Instead of making big incisions, you just have to make sometimes two or three openings millimeters in size. You can accomplish the same procedure that once required a major incision. The recovery is faster, the hospitalization is shorter.”
He recalled being told in his early years that he would “get old with your patients.”
And so he has.
“I’m still seeing patients that I delivered 35 years ago, and they’re still coming in for their annual exams,” he said. “Now I take care of their OB/GYN problems. I’m seeing the third generation. I’m delivering their babies, second and third generation.”
He’s even enjoying his own generations. Cantu and his wife have three children, one of whom gave birth to his grandson a few months ago.
“I got to deliver my own grandson,” he said. “That was a thrill. I’ll never forget that. Amazing.”
