Women who have a baby at the new Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center may feel like VIPs by the end of their stay. 

A dose of star treatment starts even before moms-to-be get in the front door. The Women’s & Children’s Center has its own entrance and parking lot, with spaces up front reserved for pregnant women. 

When patients step inside, they will be greeted in the lobby by a concierge. Those employees will be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to help with a variety of questions and, particularly, direct women in labor to the right unit, Hillcrest officials said. Also in the lobby is a gift shop stocked with items geared toward women and children. 

When moms get settled into a room after they give birth, they will be able to order food via room service. The menu will include deli items and grilled food, in addition to the hospital’s daily entrees, said Allen Pemberton, Hillcrest ‘s director of food and nutrition. Perhaps best of all, there is no added charge for the service for inpatients. 

Women who don’t mind ponying up a little extra money will also be able to book manicures, pedicures and massages. 

The rooms in both the labor-and-delivery area and the post-partum unit are luxurious, at least by hospital standards. 

The post-partum rooms, for example, look out onto a park-like area on the hospital’s grounds. It includes a waterfall and other landscaped features. 

“They intentionally got the best room in the house,” said Hillcrest chief operating officer Jim Gebhart. 

Those mother-and-baby rooms are also ample in size. They feature a sofa sleeper for guests, flat-screen televisions and recessed lighting that provides an alternative to harsher, overhead lights. 

“In the middle of the night, it’s a whole lot nicer and kinder to have a soft light,” Gaye Reid, nurse manager for labor and delivery, said. 

Similar features carry over to the labor and delivery section. The rooms are much bigger than those at Hillcrest ‘s old campus. And the bathrooms are spacious, too, with large showers. 

The flooring is nonskid. Even when the bathroom tile is wet, it doesn’t get slippery. 

That will allow women to more easily use relaxing water therapy during childbirth, Reid said. Hillcrest bought wireless, waterproof fetal monitors and shower chairs for the new facility so there is nothing that should prevent most women from getting in the shower during labor, she said. 

Another element that should help women in labor is visitors will be able to remain close at hand, assuming the mom-to-be wants people around, Reid said. 

Near each labor and delivery room is an alcove with chairs. Those areas serve as sub-waiting areas and are a big improvement over the old arrangement of the waiting room far removed, Reid said. The alcoves also give visitors some privacy, she said, since different groups don’t have to sit in close proximity. 

A curtain just inside the entrance of labor and delivery rooms provides the patient with privacy when needed, Reid said. 

Technology in the labor and delivery section will enable doctors to remotely access the information from fetal monitors, Reid said. They can log on anywhere they have an Internet connection, such as their home or office, and the system will let them see data for the previous four hours, she said. 

One area that has been scaled down from the current facility is the nursery. 

It has only 16 beds because in general, only babies with medical issues will be in the nursery. 

The rest will stay in the same room as their mothers to encourage bonding, said Melonnie Pollard, manager of the post-partum unit. The rooms have been designed with that in mind, she said, including the capability to support warmers for babies. 

For those families whose infants need to stay in the nursery, there are kid-sized stairs underneath the viewing area so young siblings can climb up and see the babies. Also, there is a private area at the back for babies that require special care, such as those being placed with adoptive families, Pollard said.