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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 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.

Oct. 2022: Foothills Hospital named among Leapfrog, Money’s list of Best Maternity Hospitals

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, or OB/GYNs, at Boulder Women's Care offer a more traditional path to delivering your baby. Some moms-to-be already know they want an epidural to manage their labor and delivery pain, while others hope to go through childbirth with as few medical interventions as possible but want them immediately available if needed, 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: Our Foothills Community Midwives’ care is based on the midwifery philosophy that labor and delivery is a natural event, relying on techniques other than medications for low-risk deliveries. 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.)

Meet Our Team

Left to right: Diane Utz, MSN, CNM; Melissa Kushlak, DO; Samantha Steppat, MSN, WHNP-BC; Nancy Engellenner, NP; Stephanie R. Traver, MSN, WHNP-BC; Jeremiah McNamara, MD; Lisa Jamroz, MD; Brenda Price MD; Marcie Mullins, MSN, CNM; Paige Swales, MSN, CNM; Martine Tesone, DNP, CNM; and Jessica Dacic, DNP, CNM

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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.)

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

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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 – COVID-19 Update

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

Visitors are welcome in the Family Birth Center. Visitor policies for Family Birth Center areas:

  • 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.
  • Our Mom-Baby area is open to visitors and healthy siblings. Quiet hours are observed between 2 to 4 p.m. Visiting siblings must be accompanied by a responsible adult who is not the patient and may not be left alone with the patient or in any area of the hospital at any time. Only siblings 12 years or older are allowed to stay the night.
  • Our Special Care Nursery is open to family visitors and healthy siblings, but no more than two people at a time. Siblings must be accompanied by an adult at all times.
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Tour the Family Birth Center

Virtual Tours Available

Expectant mothers can have the opportunity to tour our Family Birth Center virtually. Please see below for our virtual tour options:

  • Online Slide Tour
  • Zoom Tour

Online Slide Tour

Zoom Tour

Join us for a quick peak Zoom tour of Boulder Community Health's Foothills Hospital Family Birth Center. The tour is 45 minutes long and includes the Labor & Delivery Unit and Post-partum (Mother-Baby) Unit.

Register for our upcoming ZOOM tours

The Family Birth Center at Foothills Hospital is renowned for our welcoming, family-friendly environment. Our team works to help provide the birthing experience you’ve dreamed about.

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

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