Mother & Baby Care Center
Enloe Medical Center offers the most comprehensive maternity program in the region. An experienced childbirth team you can trust delivers more than 1,600 babies each year. Our highly trained staff is committed to helping mothers achieve the birth experience they've dreamed of.
About Our Maternity Unit
- Birthing rooms
- Mother/Baby unit
- Cesarean-section delivery and recovery room
- Special care nursery
- Visiting hours
- Location
Birthing rooms
A woman who has a vaginal birth will labor, birth, and recover in the same room. A whirlpool tub is available in the Maternity Unit to enhance comfort during labor. Additional pain-management options range from hypno-birthing techniques to epidural anesthesia. Additionally, doulas are available to provide non-medical and emotional support, including massage to our laboring patients. (Learn more about Enloe's Doula Program). After recovery, usually about one to two hours after giving birth, mothers and their newborns relocate to fresh surroundings on the Mother/Baby Unit.
Mother/Baby unit
On the Mother/Baby Unit, mothers are encouraged to room with their babies as much as possible, although a nursery is available to help with the care of newborns. When the mother is rooming alone, a support person is encouraged to stay overnight. We offer personal instruction with mother, baby and family to review care techniques before hospital discharge.
Cesarean-section delivery and recovery room
For convenient and expedient care, a fully equipped operating room and a post-anesthesia recovery room are located within the Maternity Unit.
Special care nursery
Sometimes babies have problems with feeding, breathing, or may have difficulty maintaining a normal blood sugar or body temperature. Some are premature or born too small. Nurses with advanced education and expertise in working with ill or unstable newborns are available to attend to high-risk deliveries and provide care in the Special Care Nursery.
Visiting hours and guidelines
Our visitor guideliness are intended to promote rest and snuggling, allow time for healing and learning, preserve privacy, enhance infant security and reduce exposure to infection. All visitors will sign in and out of the unit on each visit.
- Mother-Baby Unit: 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Birthing Unit: Flexible, at discretion of the nurse caring for the patient
- NICU: Mothers and the designated support person encouraged to visit any time of the day.
- Note about children: Children are allowed to visit at the discretion of the patient. Children must be supervised by an adult other than the patient at all times. Children are to remain in the patient's room during their visit. Children younger than 14 years old who attend the birth must be accompanied by an adult whose sole responsibility is their supervision and support. In the waiting room, children under 12 must be supervised at all times.
Partnerships
The Mother & Baby Care Center is proud of its partnerships within the community and other non-profit organizations.
One of these partnerships is with the March of Dimes, which has recognized Enloe's dedication to giving every baby a healthy start. Enloe helped develop the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative's "Pre-term Labor Assessment Toolkit." The toolkit is used at Enloe and at hospitals throughout California to help improve the assessment of mothers in pre-term labor.
Enloe's Mother & Baby Care Center is also partnered with the Butte Literacy Council, which promotes literacy through several programs including Books for Babies, which encourages early reading to infants.
Through a partnership with the Chico Outlaws, babies born at Enloe during the 2010 season will receive a Baby Rascal baseball cap, vouchers for an Outlaws game, a "This Side Up" onesie and a Tri Counties Bank piggy bank.
Contact Us
Mother & Baby Care Center
Enloe Medical Center
1531 Esplanade
Chico, CA 95926
530.332.3970
Learn about the Enloe & Chico Outlaws
Baby Rascal Contest.

The fourth floor of Enloe's new patient tower will be dedicated to maternity services. The Nettleton Mother & Baby Care Center will offer:
- Triage rooms
- Private labor and delivery rooms
- Private post-partum rooms
- A specialty care nursery
- A family lounge
- Post-partum rooms with ample space for the comfort of the mother, baby and family, including private bathroom and shower and furniture that enables loved ones to spend the night.
Learn more: Enloe Century Project expansion plans
