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Postpartum Care

The Mother-Baby Unit at East Alabama Health helps each new mother transition from the birth experience to becoming a new mom and supports each transition with care, guidance, and ongoing new parent education.

The Mother-Baby Unit helps each new mother transition from the birth experience to becoming a new mom and supports each transition with care, guidance, and ongoing new parent education.

As part of our family-centered care philosophy and a goal of the Baby-Friendly Initiative, we encourage skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby, as well as rooming in with your baby. Some advantages for your baby include the following:

  • Helps maintain body warmth
  • Regulates heart and breathing rates
  • Helps baby gain weight more quickly
  • Helps baby spend more time in deep sleep
  • Baby spends more time being quiet and alert and less time crying
  • Baby has a better chance of successful breastfeeding
  • Baby may notice less pain when getting shots or minor painful procedures
  • Promotes baby’s brain development

Skin-to-skin and rooming in is good for you, too!

  • Improved bonding and feelings of closeness with your baby
  • Increased breast milk supply and increased likelihood of breastfeeding exclusively
  • Increased confidence in ability to care for your baby
  • Increased sense of control

From this point forward, your newborn will remain with you in your room – you will not need to be separated from your newborn at any time under normal circumstances and conditions. Rooming-in with your new baby allows for the opportunity for the mother and primary support person(s) to become familiar with baby’s feeding cues, individual personalities and characteristics, and their unique sleep-wake cycles. While we do encourage your baby rooming in with you, a nursery is available if your baby is in need of medical observation and care.

In keeping with our practice of family-focused care during your postpartum stay, your nurse will respond to your defined learning needs providing support and education of new skills for first-time parents and a refresher for parents who have previously experienced childbirth and newborn care.

East Alabama Health supports the Healthy People 2020 recommendation for the initiation and continuation of breastfeeding of all newborns. To support our families as they endeavor to provide nourishment for their new baby, we offer guidance and education from our staff of certified lactation consultants as well as your individual RN care provider.

Once you and your new baby have adjusted, you will be transferred to our Mother/Baby Unit (also on the third floor). From here, you will be discharged approximately 48 hours after your birth experience. All rooms on the Mother-Baby Unit are private rooms, with bath and sleeping accommodations for the new dad/co-parent. The Mother-Baby Unit helps each new mother transition from the birth experience to becoming a new mom, and proudly supports each transition with care, guidance, and ongoing new parent education.

The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline

The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline provides 24/7, free, confidential support, resources and referrals to any pregnant and postpartum mothers facing mental health challenges and their loved ones. The service is available via phone and text in English or Spanish.