Dr. Christopher Serrano is late for our 2 o’clock appointment, but has a very good reason. So when he walks into his office of Serrano OB/GYN at 2:25, he apologizes and explains what prevented him from being on time.

“A colleague of mine called and said she had a patient in labor,” Serrano said. “She asked me if I was near North Central Baptist, and if I could help out because she couldn’t get there on time. I said, ‘Of course. I would be happy to help.’

“I get over there, and I heard a baby crying and thought, ‘I’m too late,’ but it was a baby in room No. 7. I walked into room No. 8 and met the woman and her husband. I checked the baby’s tracing and then went to put on my scrubs. I came back, the woman pushed twice, and a baby girl came out. She weighed 8 pounds, 3 ounces. Mother and baby are doing fine.”

For Serrano, delivering another bundle of joy is all in a day’s work. The baby whom the Stone Oak “stork” helped bring into the world on this recent Tuesday afternoon is one of more than 3,000 babies he has delivered during the past 15 years.

“It’s a happy time for women, and it’s nice to be able to participate in such a special time in family’s lives,” he said, adding that he delivers an average of 200 babies per year.

Serrano, who had a solo practice in Port Arthur since 1994, returned to San Antonio in November 2009 to open his new office at 20726 Stone Oak Parkway.

In addition to treating and caring for expectant mothers, Serrano OB/GYN’s services include treating low and high-risk pregnancy, abnormal menstrual bleeding and endometrial ablations. The practice also offers 21st century technology services, such as electronic medical records, 4D ultra-sound equipment. In addition, the secure portal of its Web site allows patients to access laboratory and pathology results, and even make appointments.

“An OB/GYN practice doesn’t have to be industrialized, and you don’t have to go to a doctor in a large medical group in order to get quality care,” Serrano said. “Because of innovations in technology, it allows a solo practice to have the same state-of-the-art equipment that you would find in a large group. Solo physicians can be more nimble and quicker to get patients seen and treated.”

After graduating from Churchill High School in 1981, Serrano had aspirations to be an engineer because of his strong math and science background. But half way through earning his degree, he realized engineering didn’t appeal to him as it initially did when he first started taking courses at the University of Texas at Austin. So he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and set his sights on pursuing a psychology/pre-med degree.

“I always thought psychology was fascinating,” Serrano said. “I became interested in social psychology because there were rules and things I could measure.”

After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1986 from UT-Austin, Serrano had the choice of either getting a Ph.D. in psychology or applying for medical school. His decision to enter medical school was aided somewhat by an experience the then 20 year old had working one summer in the Department of OB/GYN animal research lab at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

“They had 150 monkeys in the basement and were doing research to inhibit ovulation,” he said. “That’s where my interest in medicine began.”

However, it was during his third year as a medical student at the UT Health Science Center that cemented his idea to become a physician.

“I was doing a rotation (in OB/GYN) and realized there was a lot of the art of medicine in obstetrics,” Serrano said. “There is a lot of quick thinking that has to happen in the heat of the battle when things begin to change very quickly. Then you decide if you’re going to keep on with a vaginal delivery or go to a C-section. I like that.”

After earning his medical degree from the UT Health Science Center in 1990, Serrano did his residency in OB/GYN at California’s Loma Linda University Medical Center, which he completed in 1994. Upon visiting San Antonio, Serrano and his wife, Cristina, whom he met while he was in his final year at medical school, and she was finishing her master’s degree in psychology at St. Mary’s University, had plans to stay in San Antonio or move to Houston where he could practice medicine.

Serrano, however, said he didn’t find an OB/GYN group practice that he felt was a “good fit” in either cities. Meanwhile, he had seen an ad for a Port Arthur solo practice that was going to be available because the OB/GYN there was planning to retire.

“We were meeting the general surgeons and their wives,” he said. “It had a very different feel than meeting the CFO as I did when I interviewed with group practices. So I thought, ‘Well, we’ll go to Port Arthur for 12 to 18 months until we find that perfect job in San Antonio.’ ”

Serrano never left.

For 11 years, he and his wife and three children enjoyed a pleasant life on the Texas Gulf Coast until Hurricane Rita of 2005 and Hurricane Ike of 2008 put a damper on things.

“Rita required us to not work for six weeks,” Serrano recalled. “The town was closed. There was no water or electricity. So we stayed in San Antonio and enrolled my children in schools here.”

Three years later, Ike unleashed his wrath.

“Once again, we didn’t know how long we were going to be out of services,” Serrano said. “There was less damage because a lot of the old infrastructure had been rebuilt and was only 3 years old. In both cases, our home and office received relatively little damage, but psychologically you think everything has been destroyed.”

It was then that the Serranos decided that living 5 feet above sea level was not in their best interests. So last year, they returned to San Antonio.

The office of Serrano OB/GYN is a family affair. Cristina, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, oversees administrative duties. Serrano’s father, Alberto, is a psychiatrist and specializes in child, adult and family therapy.

So what do the physician and his wife enjoy about working alongside each other?

“Having lunch without the kids,” Cristina joked, adding that because she and her husband spend so much time together “we’ve gone from sharing an office with me as a psychologist to me becoming the office manager and having a hands-on role on the administration side.”

Serrano prides himself on the fact that at his practice patients see him at every visit. At some offices, he said, patients are seen by multiple physicians, a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant. “So women don’t always get to see the same physician, who is familiar with their medical history and often begins to build a strong patient-physician relationship,” he said. “I think that’s important to women when making an appointment with a OB/GYN.”

Today, Serrano enjoys obstetrics/gynecology just as much as he did when he opened his first practice in 1994.

“I like delivering babies, and OB/GYN gives me satisfaction in that it involves surgery, primary care and you treat patients in ways similar to an old family medicine doctor,” Serrano said. “After 15 years, I still want to do more.”