Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How does everyone on this board know with such clarity that GW is the worst? If personal experience, how many babies are you all having and how many hospitals have you given birth in?

Genuine question, because no one is ever saying, “I preferred Sibley over GW,” everyone talks about birthing hospitals as if we have all had the opportunity to have sampled each one more than once, like a lunch spot, and cannot BELIEVE that GW brought out food out cold AGAIN.

I had a fine time at GW. Postpartum not nearly as good as L&D but I’ll go back for my next birth because the strength of L&D was well worth it. FWIW everyone I know in real life who went to GW likes it, much like everyone know in real life feels generally good about any of the hospitals they went to.

I don't know if they're the worst, but they discharged my baby with borderline high bilirubin levels and having lost around 10% of his birthweight, with zero advice to me about how to detect whether he was getting any milk and when to supplement with formula. So I feel pretty confident in saying they were negligent, and that I'd never go to a Baby Friendly hospital again.

This just happened to us. No one monitored if DD was eating or having dirty dialers

Not quite on topic but: i delivered at GW in April. Great labor and delivery. Not so much post partum. I was finger feeding DD hand expressed colostrum and kept saying it didn't seem like enough. I was told repeatedly to just keep bringing baby to the breast. I had to advocate REALLY hard three times to get formula. There was one lactation consultant you see for maybe 5 mins and no hand pumps available. Staff did not seem to monitor how much DD was eating. For whatever reason, DD left horribly jaundiced and lost 10% of her birth weight.

I would bring my own formula and if possible a pump, at least a hand pump. You will be almost entirely on your own in my experience.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if this is still the case but when I delivered they were relying heavily on travel nurses, and it was very obvious which nurses were travelers because they were terrible. I found it very hard to believe they were having trouble adequately staffing L and D and postpartum nurses with full time employees, since those are some of the most popular specialties in nursing, especially for new graduates, and since DC and the surrounding areas have many high quality nursing schools in the vicinity, including Georgetown, Maryland, Hopkins, GW, etc. who are churning out new graduates each year. Not all hospitals value their nursing workforce and it shows in the ratios, staffing, and quality of care that you receive.

This!

My nurse at GW went with me to the bathroom to make sure I didn't fall. So a complete opposite experience from the PP above. I did hate all the post partum checks, blood tests and questionnaires but for them it's standard care to make sure you can go home without complications.

I don’t know if this is still the case but when I delivered they were relying heavily on travel nurses, and it was very obvious which nurses were travelers because they were terrible. I found it very hard to believe they were having trouble adequately staffing L and D and postpartum nurses with full time employees, since those are some of the most popular specialties in nursing, especially for new graduates, and since DC and the surrounding areas have many high quality nursing schools in the vicinity, including Georgetown, Maryland, Hopkins, GW, etc. who are churning out new graduates each year. Not all hospitals value their nursing workforce and it shows in the ratios, staffing, and quality of care that you receive.

I remember being screamed at by a GW nurse for wearing socks and not wearing the socks they give you to wear. I was never told that I was required to wear their socks. The nurse didn’t believe me no one had told me this. She told me I could hurt my baby by slipping and falling. But I shouldn’t have had to get up anyway. Only reason I was walking was because I didn’t have anyone to help me. I’d just had a csection and was in pain. No one would take my baby so I could sleep. Instead they wanted to yell at me about socks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How does everyone on this board know with such clarity that GW is the worst? If personal experience, how many babies are you all having and how many hospitals have you given birth in?

Genuine question, because no one is ever saying, “I preferred Sibley over GW,” everyone talks about birthing hospitals as if we have all had the opportunity to have sampled each one more than once, like a lunch spot, and cannot BELIEVE that GW brought out food out cold AGAIN.

I had a fine time at GW. Postpartum not nearly as good as L&D but I’ll go back for my next birth because the strength of L&D was well worth it. FWIW everyone I know in real life who went to GW likes it, much like everyone know in real life feels generally good about any of the hospitals they went to.

I don't know if they're the worst, but they discharged my baby with borderline high bilirubin levels and having lost around 10% of his birthweight, with zero advice to me about how to detect whether he was getting any milk and when to supplement with formula. So I feel pretty confident in saying they were negligent, and that I'd never go to a Baby Friendly hospital again.

Not enough nurses per patient, most seemed to be temp nurses or though some sort of program, either no nursery or one you’re not encouraged to use, frequent checks so you can’t get any sleep...I could go on.

Anonymous wrote:How does everyone on this board know with such clarity that GW is the worst? If personal experience, how many babies are you all having and how many hospitals have you given birth in?

Genuine question, because no one is ever saying, “I preferred Sibley over GW,” everyone talks about birthing hospitals as if we have all had the opportunity to have sampled each one more than once, like a lunch spot, and cannot BELIEVE that GW brought out food out cold AGAIN.

I had a fine time at GW. Postpartum not nearly as good as L&D but I’ll go back for my next birth because the strength of L&D was well worth it. FWIW everyone I know in real life who went to GW likes it, much like everyone know in real life feels generally good about any of the hospitals they went to.

I have delivered at GW and at Sibley and I preferred Sibley by a factor of 100. I know several other women who have done both and felt the same way. The experience of GW was bad enough that I knew I had to try something different.

Anonymous wrote:How does everyone on this board know with such clarity that GW is the worst? If personal experience, how many babies are you all having and how many hospitals have you given birth in?

Genuine question, because no one is ever saying, “I preferred Sibley over GW,” everyone talks about birthing hospitals as if we have all had the opportunity to have sampled each one more than once, like a lunch spot, and cannot BELIEVE that GW brought out food out cold AGAIN.

I had a fine time at GW. Postpartum not nearly as good as L&D but I’ll go back for my next birth because the strength of L&D was well worth it. FWIW everyone I know in real life who went to GW likes it, much like everyone know in real life feels generally good about any of the hospitals they went to.

I don't know if they're the worst, but they discharged my baby with borderline high bilirubin levels and having lost around 10% of his birthweight, with zero advice to me about how to detect whether he was getting any milk and when to supplement with formula. So I feel pretty confident in saying they were negligent, and that I'd never go to a Baby Friendly hospital again.

Anonymous wrote:I also had a bad experience there. The ratio doesn’t allow the nurses to adequately care for new moms and babies. In the future I will tour hospitals and make sure the ratio is better than 1:6. And also being Baby Friendly is something I want to avoid—that policy means moms get poor treatment.

+1000000

I also had a bad experience there. The ratio doesn’t allow the nurses to adequately care for new moms and babies. In the future I will tour hospitals and make sure the ratio is better than 1:6. And also being Baby Friendly is something I want to avoid—that policy means moms get poor treatment.

Anonymous wrote:How does everyone on this board know with such clarity that GW is the worst? If personal experience, how many babies are you all having and how many hospitals have you given birth in?

Genuine question, because no one is ever saying, “I preferred Sibley over GW,” everyone talks about birthing hospitals as if we have all had the opportunity to have sampled each one more than once, like a lunch spot, and cannot BELIEVE that GW brought out food out cold AGAIN.

I had a fine time at GW. Postpartum not nearly as good as L&D but I’ll go back for my next birth because the strength of L&D was well worth it. FWIW everyone I know in real life who went to GW likes it, much like everyone know in real life feels generally good about any of the hospitals they went to.

There are many of us who had our first child at GW and went on to have our second child somewhere else due to the horrendous PP care. At GW I had nurses calling me names, never had a chance to sleep after surgery (went 3 days without sleep!), was yelled at for not recording the breastfeeding sessions correctly, wasn’t given pain meds on time, etc.

Another factor is that our husbands were expected to care for us during our recovery at GW and there’s no way our husbands can be at home with a toddler and acting as though they work at a hospital st the same time.

The treatment at GW setoff a terrible time for me and there is no way I could do that to myself. It’s also unsafe since I was left alone for hours without any sleep and on strong pain meds.

That’s great you had a good experience but please understand there are some of us who suffered greatly at GW. The nurse to patient ratio should prove how little care you’ll receive.

Pp, I'm stumped too. I felt well cared for at GW for both pregnancies and am going back to deliver #2 there any minute now (hopefully... 40w 1d today).

How does everyone on this board know with such clarity that GW is the worst? If personal experience, how many babies are you all having and how many hospitals have you given birth in?

Genuine question, because no one is ever saying, “I preferred Sibley over GW,” everyone talks about birthing hospitals as if we have all had the opportunity to have sampled each one more than once, like a lunch spot, and cannot BELIEVE that GW brought out food out cold AGAIN.

I had a fine time at GW. Postpartum not nearly as good as L&D but I’ll go back for my next birth because the strength of L&D was well worth it. FWIW everyone I know in real life who went to GW likes it, much like everyone know in real life feels generally good about any of the hospitals they went to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of the hospitals outsource post-partum care to your partner or a hired doula to some extent - they say it’s to help with breastfeeding or help you learn to care for your baby, but it’s really to save money by hiring less nursing staff. GW, however, does it the worst of all the hospitals. They do have a “nursery” again, but they’re not going to let you use it all night like Inova Fairfax would.

+1000. GW is the worst.

How do they get away with being so awful?

The same reason we don’t have paid leave. Because we allow it. We still continue to have babies and women still go to GW for other reasons. Just like women walk back in the door of many offices/job sites a few weeks after having given birth.