Birthing Center Under Construction at Advocate Christ Medical Center

Source: Advocate Christ Medical Center.

For mothers and families, Advocate Christ Medical Center will soon be offering “New Beginnings.”

That’s the theme for the Women and Infants’ Birthing Center, now under construction and scheduled to open in Jan. 2016 in the medical center’s new, seven-story patient tower.

“The center will enable us to offer an overall enhancement of the childbirth experience for both our low-risk mothers and those moms who are experiencing a high-risk pregnancy,” said Joseph Pavese, M.D., chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Christ Medical Center, in a statement.

The new facility also will offer parents ample opportunity to bond with their newborn following delivery, said Andrea Miller, director of women and infants’ services at the medical center.

The new birthing center will have private:

• Birthing suites, each of which includes bathroom, shower, advanced medical technology, Internet access and flat-screen television
• Rooms specially equipped for high-risk mothers
• Triage rooms adjacent to labor and delivery for quicker evaluation
• Ultrasound suite with access to maternal-fetal medicine specialists
• Recovery rooms for mothers who have undergone cesarean sections, and
• Post-delivery suites with a customized infant bathing tub, wireless Internet access, TV and a family area.

The new birthing facility will also have a lactation center.

Part of the lactation center will be devoted to educational and informational kiosks and retail and rental items, including supplies for nursing mothers, clothes for the premature infants and breast pumps. The back section of the facility will offer breast-pumping and breast-feeding areas, rooms for fitting breast-feeding brassieres and consultation rooms where certified lactation consultants can assist new mothers.

In 2014, Christ Medical Center’s women and infant services team delivered nearly 3,750 babies, and that number is expected to continue rising. The multidisciplinary team includes some 40 obstetricians and 120-130 nurses.

Opening of the new birthing center also is expected to lead to enhancement of other related services, including expansion of the medical center’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

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