Your guide to a healthy pregnancy

Having a baby is a highly personal process. That’s why we focus on giving parents the pregnancy experience they want. 

Care team — You have the freedom to choose from a variety of clinicians for your prenatal care team at Kaiser Permanente hospitals:

• Your family doctor
• An obstetrician (a doctor who cares for pregnant people and delivers babies)
• A certified nurse-midwife
• A nurse practitioner 

Your team is more than the clinicians who take care of you during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Your partner or support person, family, and doula are welcome as part of your care with Kaiser Permanente.

Pregnancy care — No matter what type of prenatal care you choose, you can be confident that your safety is our top priority. We’ll follow you and your pregnancy closely to help you get the appointments, tests, and education you need.

If you have or develop a condition like high blood pressure or diabetes, we’ll work with you to reduce risks for you and your baby. Our goal is to help keep you healthy and avoid interventions like cesarean sections if they’re not necessary. Kaiser Permanente hospitals have lower C-section rates than other U.S. hospitals.¹

Birth plan — As you prepare for your big day, you’ll design your birth plan around your preferences. Your care team supports your choices — including who will be in your birthing room, how you want to cope with pain, and how you’ll feed your baby. If you choose to breastfeed or chestfeed, we can help set you up to succeed — 70% of babies born at Kaiser Permanente hospitals are exclusively breastfed during their stay, compared with 50% nationally.²

Postpartum support — Your care doesn’t end at childbirth. After you welcome your baby, you’ll continue to get the care you need for your physical and mental health.  

At Kaiser Permanente, we coordinate your care before, during, and after your pregnancy to make it easier for you and your baby to stay healthy. Your doctor works with you to understand your health history and help lower your risk of complications. 

Your entire care team can see and update your health record — in person and when you meet virtually with a clinician at Kaiser Permanente. You’re seamlessly connected to care, including a high-risk pregnancy specialist if you need one. And we help you choose a pediatrician before the birth — so your baby is taken care of from day one.

Thanks to our connected system, you can often get routine appointments, lab testing, and prescriptions filled under one roof. Most preventive care services for you and your baby come at no additional cost — including routine prenatal and postpartum visits, lactation support and equipment, and newborn screenings. You can estimate your health care costs using our cost calculator. 

Getting care when you need it is essential for a healthy pregnancy. At Kaiser Permanente, we use technology to care for expecting parents when it matters most. 

Remote monitoring devices can help track your blood pressure, blood sugar, weight, and the baby’s heartbeat.³ Some data, including your blood pressure, can be sent directly to your electronic health record so your care team can help quickly — whether it’s to adjust a medication or bring you in for care.

For people with high-risk conditions during pregnancy, remote monitoring helps prevent serious problems, including stroke and bleeding complications. And it lets some people with low-risk pregnancies get more prenatal care from the convenience of home. 

Kaiser Permanente is committed to providing the best outcomes for all expecting parents and their families. Sadly, hundreds of people in the U.S. die each year from complications during and after pregnancy and childbirth. And Black people are 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white people.⁴

We’re actively working to identify and address the causes of injury and death related to pregnancy, particularly for Black parents. Our goal is to be the best and safest place to have a baby. Some of the many steps we’re taking include:

• Training our clinicians and staff to recognize and avoid unconscious bias (the social stereotypes people form without being aware of them)
• Expanding access to remote care, such as at-home blood pressure monitors
• Using a program to prevent and treat one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death — bleeding complications 
• Partnering with patients and family members of diverse backgrounds to hear their perspectives on quality and safety initiatives 

Newborns are always adorable, but not often punctual. That’s why our birth centers are staffed 24/7 with labor and delivery doctors, anesthesiologists, midwives, and other key care team members. This means we can make clinical decisions anytime, day or night — including moving quickly to a C-section, if needed. And if you want to give birth vaginally, take comfort in knowing that our rate for VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean) is 18% higher than the national average.^5,6

Since opening in 2014, the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center has cared for more than 2,500 babies, including 190 sets of twins and 5 sets of triplets. As a Level III NICU, we can treat critically ill newborns and those born as young as 23 weeks. Our highly trained staff is available around-the-clock and welcomes you as an integral part of the team.

If you’ve had trouble getting pregnant, you have a wide range of treatments and support to choose from. Our clinicians provide personalized fertility counseling, fertility labs, testing, prescriptions, and IUI (intrauterine insemination) services. A trusted network of outside fertility specialists provides even more options to help you work toward growing your family.