Sutter Medical Center has a long tradition of being Sacramento’s baby hospital, delivering more than 6,700 babies each year. Our Anderson Lucchetti Women’s and Children’s Center is the new home to Sutter Medical Center’s Family Birth Center. Opened in 2015, the Family Birth Center features 20 private labor and delivery rooms and 51 private postpartum rooms, all with views of the Sacramento area.

Your Birthing Experience

Your healthcare provider works with you to make choices for your birthing experience based on your individual needs and desires. These choices encompass all aspects of the labor, birth, recovery and postpartum experience. You may choose your own options for birthing as long as they are safe choices for you and your baby.

We keep all mothers, babies and significant others together after delivery so you can experience this special bonding time as a family unit. Every effort will be made to accommodate your birth experience choices. You and your baby’s welfare are of utmost importance to us in determining if we can safely offer your choices at any given time. Discuss your expectations with your family and healthcare provider during pregnancy.

For a comprehensive library of tools and articles to help you and your partner through pregnancy, labor, and delivery, visit Babies at Sutter Health.

Birthing Options

We encourage you and your family to make a plan for your labor and delivery experience, and notify your nursing team of this plan upon arrival at the hospital. Each of our patients labor, deliver and recover in a large, private room, where your partner and family can participate in your birth experience.

Options during labor include fetal heart rate monitoring while walking and around the clock access to childbirth anesthesia, including patient-controlled epidural analgesia, walking epidurals, intrathecal narcotics and traditional epidural analgesia. We have dedicated care teams and operating rooms available for cesarean births should the need arise.

Postpartum Care

Once your baby is born, you and your baby are given an initial assessment of your condition by a registered nurse. We then encourage immediate skin-to-skin contact with your baby to help establish breastfeeding. We offer an uninterrupted hour of time after the birth of your child for you and your family to begin bonding with your little one.

To help encourage bonding and breastfeeding, your baby stays with you in your room. Our registered nurses are trained in breastfeeding and may refer you to our certified lactation consultants if you have complex breastfeeding issues. During your stay, we focus on giving you and your family all the information you need to care for yourself and your baby once you go home.

Each private postpartum room includes a bathroom with a shower and toilet, a sleeping space for your partner or support person and windows to enjoy natural sunlight. If you have a vaginal birth, your hospital stay is generally about one or two days. After a cesarean birth, you can expect to stay approximately three days. In every case, the decision on when you go home is made by you and your physician based on you and your baby’s medical condition.