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Family Birth Center

Your Childbirth Experience, Your Way

At Boulder Community Health, we’re committed to making sure that the birth of your child is everything you hope it will be. With an experienced team always at your side, our award-winning Family Birth Center at Foothills Hospital offers a full range of services to ensure you get the care, comfort and keepsake moments you’ve dreamed about — not to mention private, family-friendly suites with gorgeous mountain views.

Dec. 2023: Foothills Hospital named to U.S. News' 2024 Best Hospitals for Maternity Care

View Related Obstetricians & Midwives

A Choice of Providers for a Personalized Birth Experience

We recognize your expectations are unique and that the delivery team at your side must be the right fit for you. That’s why we offer two types of health care providers to deliver your baby in the safety of our family-centered hospital:

  • Obstetrician physician: Our expert obstetricians-gynecologists (OB-GYNs) with BCH’s Boulder Women's Care and Boulder Medical Center in Boulder offer a more traditional path to delivering your baby. Some moms-to-be are more comfortable going through labor and delivery with a highly trained physician who has completed four years of medical school followed by a four-year residency program, making an obstetric path the right fit. Also, women who have a high-risk pregnancy have the benefit of being cared for by specially trained physicians.
  • Midwife: Certified nurse-midwives with BCH’s Foothills Community Midwives and Boulder Medical Center in Boulder provide care based on the midwifery philosophy, which supports labor and delivery as a natural event, relying on techniques other than medications for low-to-moderate-risk pregnancies and births. Their care is best suited for moms-to-be who want a more natural, holistic labor and delivery experience. The midwifery model of care is also of shared decision-making, with a midwife educating and supporting you both emotionally and physically.

Our obstetricians and nurse-midwives will guide through your options for childbirth — such as options for pain relief, delivery methods, infant feeding, and newborn care — and help you create a birth plan that supports your wishes for that special day. (Download our guide for creating a birth plan.)

BCH's Physician and Midwife Team

Left to right: Suzanne Dysart, DO; Diane Utz, MSN, CNM; Melissa Kushlak, DO; Samantha Steppat, MSN, WHNP-BC; Samantha McLean, DO; Jeremiah McNamara, MD; Lisa Jamroz, MD; Brenda Price, MD; Paige Swales, MSN, CNM; Martine Tesone, DNP, CNM; and Jessica Dacic, DNP, CNM;

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Boulder Medical Center in Boulder's Physician and Midwife Team

Left to right: Heather Bright-Hoffmeyer, MD; Erin Harper-Sanchez, CNM; Kathryn Hoch, MD; Andrea Burgess, MD; and Lyndsay Lev, CNM

Private, Spacious Suites Surrounded by Gorgeous Views

Surrounded by Boulder’s breathtaking Flatirons Mountains, our Family Birth Center is a one-of-kind facility providing your ideal birth experience.

  • Modern Labor-Delivery Suites: You’ll stay in one of our eight private suites for your labor and baby’s birth, including the initial hours of recovery. Each suite has a spa tub and fold-down couch for your key support person to stay overnight, as well as birth balls and squat bars to ease contractions.

  • Family-Friendly Mom-Baby Suites: After welcoming your newborn, you’ll be transferred to one of our spacious, home-like, family-friendly mom-baby suites, designed to let you and your baby room-in together during your stay. With your baby nearby, you’ll receive support from experienced nursing staff to assist you with recovering from childbirth, breastfeeding (if desired), understanding basic newborn care and transitioning to home. Each suite has its own temperature control and mini-refrigerator, and most have queen-size beds for family bonding.

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Innovative Pain- and Stress-Relief Options

Whether you wish to manage your pain naturally or use medications during labor, our experienced labor-and-delivery team will be there to offer you caring support and guidance.

  • Natural Pain-Relief Options: We offer many stress- and pain-relieving holistic therapies, including aromatherapy and self-pay acupuncture treatments. In addition, each of our delivery suites has a spa tub, birth balls and squat bars to ease your contractions.
  • Pain-Relief Medications: Our experienced labor and delivery nurses are here to support you with nitrous oxide, an inhaled pain reliever that you can control. While using nitrous, you can move around freely in labor. If you decide to have something additional for pain, such as an epidural or intravenous pain medication, an experienced anesthesiologist is available to meet your needs 24 hours a day.
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First-of-its-Kind Special Care Nursery

Operated in collaboration with Children’s Hospital Colorado, our Family Birth Center is home to a Special Care Nursery (NICU) for families with premature babies or who have infants with extra medical needs. Every family stays together in a private suite. One room for newborns and an adjoining room for family members — so parents can be near their baby at all times.

Our Special Care Nursery includes:

  • Neonatal nurse practitioners and neonatal physicians from Children’s Hospital Colorado.
  • 24/7 access to neonatal specialists
  • Support of nurses and infant-feeding consultants who coach and collaborate with parents on care taking
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Lower-Than-Average C-section Rates

If you opt for natural childbirth, both our obstetricians and midwives will support you without intervention if your labor is progressing normally. That’s why our Family Birth Center consistently has low C-section rates (15.4% in 2022) and high VBAC (vaginal birth after C-section) success rates compared to averages among Colorado hospitals.

Baby-Friendly Designation

BCH is Baby-Friendly, a designation sponsored by the World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and promoted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). Our Baby-Friendly USA Certification means we’ve earned recognition for our efforts in giving babies a healthy start in life. The rigorous designation requires birth centers to have policies that enhance mother-baby bonding, offer optimal care for infant feeding and ensure a baby’s nutritional needs are adequately met, regardless of whether a mom chooses to breastfeed or formula-feed. Read What Being Baby-Friendly means.

  • Support for mother-baby bonding: As soon as your full-term, healthy baby is born and umbilical cord clamped, they will be placed skin-to-skin, belly-down, directly on your chest. Snuggling skin-to-skin lets you and your baby get to know each other, helps soothe your newborn and facilitates breastfeeding. We also support moms and infants rooming together day and night (also called rooming-in) to encourage maternal-infant bonding and promote early breastfeeding for moms who wish to do so.

  • Breastfeeding Support: There are many benefits to breastfeeding. If you choose to breastfeed, we have team of registered nurses with lactation certification available to support you every day you’re in the hospital. Click here for breastfeeding support and resources.

After you and baby have gone home, you can schedule an outpatient breastfeeding support consultation with a board-certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) by simply calling (303) 415-7230. (We’re also available to answer questions about breastfeeding over the telephone at (303) 415-7230.)

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Our Family Birth Center rents electric breast pumps and sells a variety of breastfeeding supplies. Call (303) 415-7230 for availability and rates.

Birthing Friendly Designation

Our Family Birth Center is recognized as a “Birthing Friendly” hospital by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). "Birthing-Friendly" is a national designation recognizing high-quality maternity care. The designation identifies hospitals and health systems that participate in perinatal quality improvement collaborative programs and that implement evidence-based care to improve maternal health.

Inpatient Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation

Our team of pelvic floor physical therapists have specialized training in pelvic floor rehabilitation and are now available to consult with new moms while they’re still inpatients at our Family Birth Center. They’ll cover such things as pelvic floor health, safe return to exercise after delivery and body mechanics to avoid undue strain or pain, especially in the stomach or back areas. They will also answer all your questions and provide information about BCH outpatient services for pelvic floor rehabilitation.

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Delivering at the Family Birth Center

When you are in labor:

  • Call your provider.
  • When you arrive at the hospital, park in a surface-level lot directly in front of the hospital or next to the Anderson Medical Center. Parking is also available in two parking garages.
  • Do not enter the hospital through the emergency department. Use the door halfway between the main entrance and the emergency room entrance. If arriving after hours (between 8 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.), then please use the emergency room entrance.
  • Take the elevators by the gift shop to the 3rd floor. Take a right. The Labor and Delivery Unit is on the left. (View map of Foothills Hospital).
  • Ring the video doorbell to be let in.
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Family Birth Center Visitation

  • Labor & Delivery encourages a limit of TWO birthing partners who can care for and support a patient in labor. Birthing partners are encouraged to stay with mother and baby throughout their stay.
  • For visitors under the age of 12, view our current visitation policy.
  • To protect vulnerable patients, our Special Care Nursery is open to no more than two people at a time.
  • Quiet hours are between the hours of 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. No visitors are permitted in the Family Birth Center during those hours.
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Tour the Family Birth Center

Join us for an in-person tour of our Family Birth Center at Foothills Hospital. The tour is 45 minutes long and includes the Labor & Delivery Unit and Post-Partum (Mother-Baby) Unit. Please click the links below to sign up for a tour.

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Have a question? Email parentresources@bch.org, or
call (303) 415-7244.

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