Delivered at NYU

This is from a dad’s perspective (me)

I read so many Weil Cornell vs NYU posts for parents trying to decide where to deliver. My wife just gave birth at NYU Tisch on the 19th and I am writing this from our room as we wait for the doc to clear us to go home

Staff was amazing all around, from triage to everyone that helped us through this whole process here. I am forever grateful for all their hands in making this experience as good as possible

We had an unexpected C section. My wife ended up being induced, but after almost 24hrs of labor she stopped dilating around 8cm. The labor/delivery room was AMAZING. It was huge, own bathroom, sink, mini fridge, big couch with small table in the middle that had a pull out. Room felt updated, great lighting etc. I was really impressed.

I want to preface this by saying we were at the beginning of a huge rush of births. I overheard one nurse say that they had like 30 births that day, when a busy day for them is about 20.

Post c section were stuck in a small very uncomfortable observation post op area that felt very much like the triage area. 3 beds in this room and the curtains were separating them. Some people in there were just coming in and some had just given birth. Difficult to maneuver and we were basically counting down the time until everyone cleared her so we could go up recovery rooms.

When we got moved up it was a shared room. We had the bed away from the window and this space was also tiny. There was already a family on the other side and it was about 1-2am at this point. This space was bad, very bad imo. There was really only enough room for the bed and the single chair on the side. No room to walk around if the curtain is closed. My wife was still on all the drugs from surgery so she basically passed out, I think nurses noticed my uneasiness about trying to take care of this newborn and they offered to take her to nursery and watch her for the night. Stress level went down a ton and I was super thankful to get some rest knowing my wife was sleeping and baby was taken care of. I think we had been up for like 48hrs at this point.

The next morning the other family checked out early, and we were lucky enough to get moved to a private. I won’t go into details but we were very lucky because the nurse said that downstairs there were people waiting in the halls to get into rooms. The private room was fine, nothing great, felt dated but the space and privacy alone made it perfect coming from the night we had just spent in a shared room.

We ended staying longer than anticipated because my wife was having issues managing pain. All the nurses, staff have been wonderful. Never once did we feel like we had to question the decisions being made, most were very informative (this is our first). Overall the experience was good for us.

I will say this though, if we did not get into a private room I feel like this experience would have been terrible for the amount of time we had to spend here. It seemed like a lot of parents who gave natural births or had multiple children had a much quicker recovery and were out the next day. So if you are lucky enough to have a quick recovery I feel like the shared room would be such a momentary thing you could get through it. Our wing had only 3 dedicated private rooms, everything else on the floor was setup shared. Right now as we are getting ready to leave I am seeing that there are a lot of single families in rooms set up for 2 so that’s a relief.

With the good experience we had, we understand that we were very fortunate to get into a private room. If we decide for another we will definitely be going to Weil Cornell because it’s honestly not worth the risk for the amount of discomfort, stress, exhaustion that comes from a delivery to chance it on one of those shared rooms for recovery.

Feel free to ask questions. I do have a newborn and a wife in recovery so my priorities are there but when I get a chance I will do my best to answer what I can.