By the end of this year, Dr. Marisol San Inocencio will have sung “happy birthday” 300 times. This number appears to be a wild exaggeration, but it is accurate. The OB-GYN delivers at least 300 babies a year, and she uses the song to welcome each of them into the world. Though San Inocencio provides multiple different services ranging from surgeries to cosmetic procedures, childbirth is her favorite.
“Birthing a baby is the best part. The fact that I’m a part of bringing life into the world is incredible. Every birth is a different experience,” she said.
Dr. San Inocencio owns and operates her own practice, the Women’s Care Center, located in Milledgeville. For 16 years, she has owned the center, which previously had branches in Monticello and Lake Oconee. Because her Milledgeville practice had grown so fast, she decided to close the other two locations.
“I was so busy in Milledgeville that I couldn’t go to the other offices,” she said.
After growing up in Puerto Rico, San Inocencio attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison for three years, then began medical school at Pennsylvania State University. Before obtaining her residency from the University of Miami, she decided to change her major to obstetrics and gynecology. Previously, she had been thinking of cardiology, but the idea of bringing life into the world drew San Inocencio to her current field of practice.
Out of all of the different cities she had lived and studied in, San Inocencio was offered a job in Milledgeville. Though at first she was unsure, wondering why she had been called to such a small town, San Inocencio grew fond of the town. Upon moving to Milledgeville in 1999, she worked in a practice with two brothers – but only for a short while.
“It didn’t work out,” she said. However, this was the perfect opportunity for San Inocencio.
The following year, she opened her own practice, the Women’s Care Center, whose goal is to “treat each and every patient with the utmost respect and compassion.”
Although San Inocencio adores being an OB-GYN it does not make her job easy. She is the only doctor within her practice, so she is preoccupied at all hours of the day. She has two nurse practitioners to help her, but still, she must constantly divide herself in different areas.
“I’m on-call 24/7; I never turn the phone off,” she said.
San Inocencio’s passion for women’s care is fueled by her own past experiences. “I have two children. Having had health and pregnancy complications, I have experienced those things,” she said. “It improves my position and makes me more in-tune with my patients.”
She is aware of how difficult it can be for women to encounter health problems related to obstetrics and gynecology, so she uses her experiences to better the health and lives of women. She explains that women’s healthcare is important because it not only affects women, but all people.
“If a woman is healthy and, you know, taken care of, she can take care of her family. Everybody depends on her. It’s about keeping women healthy so they can keep their families healthy and strengthen the community,” she said proudly.
Not only does San Inocencio dedicate her life to making sure women are healthy on the inside, she also wants women to think positively about who they are on the outside. In addition to the Women’s Care Center, she owns a “Medi-Spa” where she nurtures to women’s aesthetic needs. From skincare to botox, she provides options for women to improve their outward appearances in a way that brings them confidence and inspires them to live healthy lives.
“If a woman doesn’t feel good about herself, she can’t desire to get better,” she said. “I feel that I can provide the best care I can, being a woman that has been through what my patients have gone through.”