Family Birth Center at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital

Baby-friendly means that a maternity facility has successfully implemented the ten steps to successful breastfeeding, which include providing appropriate education to enable families to make informed decisions about infant feeding, encouraging mothers to hold their babies skin-to-skin immediately following birth, and offering expert lactation support throughout and beyond the hospital stay.

Safe Sleep Certification is a program created by Cribs for Kids that provides certification to hospitals caring for infants under 1 year of age. Hospitals that are certified are recognized for their efforts to ensure infant safe sleep.

A birth center is a diagnostic and treatment center organized to provide care to low-risk patients during pregnancy, labor and delivery.

Attendance at birth and parenting classes is not mandatory, though the benefits of birth and parenting classes can be great for women and their partners.

Laceration support is provided by doctors who specialize in the treatment of laceration wounds. They clean and prepare the wound and use steri-strips, dermabond, staples, or stitches to close the wound and promote healing.

A neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is a special care nursery designed to care for newborns born at an early gestational age or full-term infants that require close monitoring or intravenous antibiotics after birth.

Maternity care is provided to women who are having a baby. The goal is to help mothers and fathers provide a loving, nurturing, safe environment for their newborn. They have access to services such as a full healthcare team, the most advanced technology, comfortable birthing rooms, and breastfeeding support.