Anyone Delivered at Prentice? Likes/Dislikes

Hi A.:

I delivered at Prentice in August of 2008 and my experience was fine. Nothing to totally rave about but nothing horrible.

Pros:

-Completely new hospital.
-All private rooms. (I cringe when I see that people have to share a room at other hopitals.)
-They have a built in window bench for your husband to sleep on in the room.
-When you want to eat you just order off a menu. (This could be totally normal for all hospitals. I have no idea.)

Cons

Well, they aren't really supportive of breastfeeding. Don't get me wrong, they are very pro breastfeeding but don't have the means to support it. For example, every nurse told me a different method to breatfeed and this one really militant pro-breastfeeding nurse freaked out because I gave my son formula the second night. (Despite the fact this nurse had no children and never breastfed. LOL)In hindsight, they couldn't have been so horrible as I made it 13 months.

-Some nurses are great and others are not so great, but that is just how every hospital and every doctor's office is.

Net/Net: At the end of the day it is a hopital visit not a weekend at the Ritz. My baby was healthy, we didn't catch mersa or anything and the anesthesiologist was fast and giving me the epidural.:-)

Hope this helps a little.

A.

I should preface this by saying that I am a big fan of CNMs and the midwife model of birth. I had my first at Prentice with NMPG CNMs. He ended up being breech at term, so a scheduled c-section. I was disappointed in the whole experience but do not fault my midwives of course! Still, I did not like Prentice because it seemed very impersonal. There were a lot of "standard operating procedures" and I got the impression from speaking with friends that even the midwives were somewhat constrained by the system. Prentice is a "baby factory" 12,000 births per year, 90% of the women have epidurals, 29% c-section rate, etc etc. Yes, they have large-screen TVs, but I wasn't too impressed with the nurses I had. I got a lot of "these are the rules and this is the way we do it here". Most births at Prentice are pretty medicalized - they aren't shy with pitocin, will want to monitor you continuously probably, etc etc. The Midwives do attend water births, but almost everyone "risks out" of them.

My second child was at UIC (a VBAC). I had her with Family Medicine but also considered going with the midwives there. I really liked both practices. UIC does far fewer births (around 2500/year) and has only a 14% c-section rate. A big reason for this is that over half the births at UIC are attended by midwives and family practice doctors. (UIC has a great midwives group that I highly recommend). I felt very supported in my birth choices and felt that my medical care was much more individualized. They followed my birth plan TO THE LETTER and were very evidence-based in their practice.

If I have a third child I will see a midwife again, and I hope to never set foot in Prentice. FYI, most midwives that I know will do "co managed" care for you even if you are high risk. That is the best of both worlds since you'll still get the increased time with a midwife, but the medical expertise of the OB/GYN.

Hi A..
I had my son at Prentice this past May with a midwife. (Sare Eggemeir and she rocked!) I had heard some pretty scary stories, but we had an awesome experience. I had a drug free birth, and did not feel pressured at all to take the epidural. I also heard that c-sections are pretty common there, but again, I didn't feel the pressure.

I disagree with the PP. I thought the nurses on both floors were awesome! They were helpful with me and with my son. I also found them to be very supportive and helpful with nursing.
The rooms are beautiful. I guess a con is having to pay for parking. Good luck with whatever you choose!

I delivered my daughter there in May, 2008. I was very dissapointed of my entire birth experience. Twenty people came running into my room because they "lost" the babys heart beat. The nurse didn't say a word to me so I was hysterical when they all started doing what they were doing and yelling and pulling lights down. They put a fetal monitor on the babys head. I wanted a drug free delivery, but I was kind of forced or should I say "scared" into getting an epidural.
Then they told me that if I didn't get the epidural now that if they had another "problem" I would be taken in for a c-section and put under general anesthesia and would miss the entire birth of my child. Now, I can not tolerate general anesthesia and I usually am sick for 24 hours after the anesthesia. So then they said that I would not be able to see the baby until I stop throwing up and I would miss bonding with her for at least the 24 hours. So I agreed to the epidural. Then a few hours later, my blood pressure dropped dangerously low and they had to stop the epidural. Well, my husband couldn't even massage my back because of the epidural, I had to learn a different way to deal with the contractions. That is how I was dealing with the contractions in the first place before the epidural. So I ended up having a c-section (not emergency). In recovery, the nurse had to find someone to help me nurse the baby because she didn't have time or didn't know how. Then she had to find someone else to change the baby, because she was just too busy. Upstairs, again, I was very dissapointed. As my doctor told me I could be released at about 10am, the nurse told me that I kinda "fell thru the cracks" because I was never seen by a lactation specialist. But yet, almost everytime I had to feed the baby, I asked for help. And I was also given a few items that only a lactation specialist should of given me, by a nurse and the specialist has fuming about it, like it was my fault. And the lactations specialist made me feel like a failure because my daughter was screaming her head off while we were trying to get her near my breast, and she just kept telling everybody that the baby was "starving". I just sat there crying because the baby was crying and the lactation specialist was no help to me at all. Thank goodness for the nurse that was there at that time, because she was more help than anything. And the specialist told me that I couldn't leave until she saw me breastfeed twice more. So when I should of been out of the hospital around 10 am, I did not end up leaving until 6:30pm. And I never called the specialist back when I was breastfeeding, I just told the nurse to help me. So all in all, my one and only birthing experience was nothing like I wanted it to be. My whole birth plan, while I planned and researched for two months, wasn't even taken into consideration. If you do deliver your baby there, I hope your experience is nothing like me. Congratulations and good luck.