ASPEN — Expecting mothers from Aspen to El Jebel now have a much more modern place to have their babies than in the past, thanks to the partial completion of a new maternity ward at Aspen Valley Hospital.

The new “Aspen Birth Center” is roughly two and a half times as large as the old maternity ward, or it will be once renovation of the old maternity ward is finished.

In the meantime, local moms-to-be can have their babies in a brand new, $6.5 facility that is to begin accepting patients some time in the next couple of weeks.

Hospital officials conducted a media tour of the new wing last week, showing off the bigger labor and delivery rooms, nicer furnishings and new features — which include Jacuzzi bathtubs with colored lights to help mom chill out (or warm up) before the big event, and specially built armoire cabinets that contain a baby bunk with a warming lamp, a scale and infant monitoring equipment.

Each delivery room also has a pair of high-intensity lamps built into the ceiling to shine directly onto the lower part of the bed, to help doctors and nurses see better during the delivery process.

The new wing is done up in what CEO Dave Ressler called a “color palette” that reflects seasonal changes in the mountains surrounding the hospital, and is both durable enough and softly unobtrusive enough to last a long time, even if fashions among hospital color schemes change.

“It’s clean, it’s bright, it’s very patient friendly, very family friendly,” declared an obviously proud Cheryl Heffernan, manager of the birthing department.

“Our goal is to be here ... versus going to the operating room” for deliveries, Heffernan explained, although Cesarean section births will still take place in the operating room.

The layout boasts five labor/delivery/recovery rooms [known as LDR rooms in medical parlance] and four post-partum rooms located on the other side of a set of swinging doors to keep the noise levels down in the post-partum wing. There also is a post-partum room, said Heffernan, that will be convertible to an LDR when needed. A key part of the expansion is the new nurses station, perhaps twice as big as the old station and with a new fetal monitoring system that will allow the nurses to check on babies from the station.

According to hospital spokeswoman Ginny Dyche, AVH handles between 300 and 340 births per year on the average — three times the number of babies born there in 1977.

Over the past decade, Dyche said, the numbers have hit a plateau with only “a slight increase” in the annual birth rate. but they numbers, hospital officials have said, still outstripped the capacity of the old maternity ward.

And, Ressler added, AVH is handling “a fair number of deliveries from the midvalley” every year, a number that the hospital expects to increase with the valley’s expected overall population growth.

The expanded birthing facilities are phase one of a larger expansion and renovation project, estimated to cost $100 million, that is to take place in the coming years.

Phase two, according to officials, will be in the Patient Care Unit, the wing where the regular patient rooms are located.

Officials clearly were proud of the Aspen Birth Center expansion, noting that in the old maternity ward, the nurses once had to take care of nine babies at once in a room designed for two.

In the new wing, the nursery is equipped for “special care” babies, and designed for four beds at once. The new wing also is equipped to re-admit babies who experience medical problems after they leave, which Heffernan said is far better than putting them in with the general patient population in the Patient Care Unit.

The old maternity ward, when it is finished, will contain a medicines room, a kitchen, an “anapartum room” for examining moms prior to the birth date, a waiting room, and an educational/lactation room for helping new moms learn some of the finer points of motherhood.

The renovation of the old maternity ward should take about five months, according to John Scheid, AVH facilities manager, and Russell Sedmak, who is heading up the project for contractor Heery International, Inc. of Denver.

jcolson@aspentimes.com