Family Birth Center
At Southeast Health, we believe birth is a celebration of life and a supportive environment for every childbirth experience is essential. That’s why Southeast Health’s Family Birth Center provides family-centered healthcare to expectant mothers and their babies during normal, as well as high-risk, pregnancies and births. Our Family Birth Center offers:
- Inviting labor/delivery suites that provide a calming, home-like atmosphere and feature spacious bathrooms with a tub and shower.
- Comfortable places for dads, including recliners for catching quick naps.
- Private birthing suites include a refrigerator and TV.
- Well-baby nursery and Level III NICU.
- The Women’s Center Boutique, which provides breast-feeding supplies and other resources.
- Accommodations for Couplet Care, where babies remain in the room with their mothers. Couplet Care enhances bonding between baby and mom, and helps dad learn about infant care and support.
Family and friends want to share your joy by getting a peek at the new baby. Click here to view our secure web photo gallery.
Couplet care is based on the belief that babies should remain with their mothers after birth. In the past, babies were delivered, and then moved to a separate nursery. Couplet care places newborns in the same room with their mothers until both go home. A single nurse attends to the needs of both mom and baby.
Couplet care has proven to be more effective in providing better care for new moms and their babies. It also enhances bonding time for mom, dad and their baby. Southeast Health nurses are professionally trained to provide couplet care.
While the participation of a father or partner in the actual birth has become routine, couplet care at Southeast Health also allows them to be present for the duration of mother’s and baby’s stay at the hospital. During this time, they learn how their help and participation is important to the care of the newborn – and the new mom. Many first-time fathers find that learning how they can help while mother and baby are still in the hospital increases their comfort level when they go home.
Couplet care rooms include extra sleeping accommodations for dads or partners, and there are no limitations on how long or how often fathers visit. Couplet Care places an emphasis on a mother and baby being cared for together, by the same physicians, nurses and medical staff.
Southeast Health Breast Milk Depot
The Southeast Health Breast Milk Depot serves as a drop off site for The Mothers’ Milk Bank of Alabama, a HMBANA designated human milk bank. Donated human milk provides premature and ill infants with life-saving breast milk. If you are interested in donating milk, click here.
Our inviting labor/delivery suites provide a calming, home-like atmosphere. In a traditional maternity unit, a woman is moved following delivery. In some cases, she is in one room for labor, another for delivery, and another for recovery. After the birth she is moved yet again to a postpartum room. Her baby, meanwhile, is taken to a nursery and then brought to the mother at various times throughout the day. Often the mother shares her postpartum room with another woman.
Our luxurious private birthing suites feature amenities such as a tub and shower, refrigerator, and TV. A well-baby nursery and Level III NICU are located in the Center. The Women’s Center Boutique is not only a place to buy “the perfect gift,” it also serves as a resource for newborns and moms.
Quiet Time
The Family Birth Center has designated quiet time for mom and baby from 2-4 p.m. each day. During this special time, mothers are encouraged to rest, breastfeed, and bond with baby. We ask that visitors are limited, including siblings. One support person may stay in the room during quiet time.
Wait for Eight
Delayed newborn bathing is consistent with World Health Organization recommendations and based on medical research. Here are 8 benefits for delaying a newborn’s first bath:
1. Reduced risk of infection: Babies are born covered in a white substance called vernix. Vernix is composed of the skin cells your baby made early in development. Vernix contains proteins that prevent common infections. Think of vernix as a sort-of natural anti-germ ointment. Your baby is born covered in this. Germs are often transmitted to newborns during birth. These germs can cause blood infections, pneumonia and meningitis, and can be fatal. These are not rare infections– we test babies for them daily. Vernix is nature’s protection against these infections.
2. Stabilized infant blood sugar: Bathing a baby too soon after birth can cause low blood sugar. Here’s why: in the first few hours after birth a baby has to adjust to life outside the womb, including losing the placenta as a source of blood sugar. Bathing causes crying, stress and the release of stress hormones. Stress hormones can cause a baby’s blood sugar to drop, which can make a baby too sleepy to wake up and breastfeed, causing the blood sugar to drop even more. Rarely, low blood sugar can cause nervous system injury.
3. Improved temperature control: Giving a baby a bath too soon can cause baby to be too cold. Inside mom it was about 98.6 degrees, but most babies are born in rooms that are about 70 degrees. In the first few hours after birth a baby has to use a lot of energy to keep warm. If a baby gets too cold, he or she can drop their blood sugar or have other complications.
4. Improved maternal-infant bonding: New babies need to snuggle skin-to-skin with their mom be given a chance to try to breastfeed Those first few minutes of life are not meant to be spent with a nurse or any healthcare professional. Those precious few minutes are meant for bonding between baby and parents. As long as the baby does not need help breathing, babies need to be held by their mother. Infants who are held skin-to-skin on mom’s chest have better blood sugar and temperature control and have easier time learning to breastfeed. We even do skin-to-skin at C-section births. The bath can wait.
5. Improved breastfeeding: Studies show more breastfeeding success when moms are allowed to stay skin to skin with babies. Skin to skin time is not interrupted by medical “procedures” or a bath. If you’ve ever struggled to breastfeed a newborn, you know how hard it can be to get them to latch onto your nipple. Breastfeeding can become stressful on a very tired mother. But babies who breastfeed in the first hour of life have a much easier time learning how to latch. Why? Because when the baby is inside mom’s womb, she is constantly and rhythmically sucking in amniotic fluid and swallowing it. If you breastfeed right away, the baby knows how to suck and swallow. If you put a baby skin-to-skin between mom’s bare breasts at delivery, she will be warm, soothed by mom’s voice, find the breast herself, latch right on and start nursing. This is how the first few minutes of life are meant to be. Forget the bath.
6. No baby lotion required: Vernix is a natural skin moisturizer and skin protectant. Babies need skin protection during the transition from the amniotic fluid into the air environment. If you delay the bath, there is no need for artificially scented baby lotion. Instead, you get to enjoy that new-baby smell.
7. Everyone will wear gloves: Hospital workers are always supposed to wear gloves when caring for an unbathed baby, to prevent exposure to body fluids such as amniotic fluid and blood. Some studies have shown that glove-wearing keeps babies safer too, by preventing transmission of common viruses and other infections from workers to babies.
8. Parents get to enjoy bathing their baby: After mom has had time to recover, parents can more easily participate in baby’s first bath and it becomes a teaching opportunity between nursing and parents. You can use whatever special baby bath products you choose and watch your baby coo and smile.
The Family Birth Center cares about the safety of you and your baby. As such, we enforce several security measures:
- A State-of-the-art infant security and alarm system.
- A special identification system for you and your baby, from admission to discharge.
- Locked Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Newborn Nursery.
- Photo identification badges worn by all Southeast Health staff.
Southeast Health employees are trained in infant security. We protect you and your baby’s name, address and other identifying information. Security staff are employed 24/7.
Family Birth Center
1108 Ross Clark Circle
Dothan, AL 36301
For more information or to schedule a tour of the Family Birth Center, call 334-793-8956 or 1-877-877-8724.