[BronzeBeauty1]

I am looking for the best hospitals to deliver my baby at (I'm due in November). I know there is Yale but my own mother didn't have a very good birthing experience there and I was just wondering if it may have been a specific bad doctor? Or if it was Yale's birthing center? What other hospitals that are in New Haven, or even around New Haven like West Haven, Orange, etc that are excellent for delivering a baby?

[JayCT]

Yale has one of the best reputations in the state, if not the country. If you do not want to go there, I have heard good things about Derby Hospital's Birthing Center. Jay

[Stylo]

I think they probably just had a fluke of an experience. Yale has very high standards. Milford and Griffin (Derby) would be good alternatives.

[BronzeBeauty1]

Thank you. Well the thing with Yale is my mom had an issue delivering my sister. The doctor in her 8th month went up her canal too far and my sister ended up coming out special. We don't know why but my mom knew the doctor didn't know what he was doing so despite Yale's rep, I'll pass. I heard that St. Raphael was pretty good too. I'm just not sure.

[Stylo]

St. Raphael is Yale now, they were just bought out. They have a good reputation too. Also that must've been quite a long time ago and things change, and doctors come and go. Yale is considered one of the best hospitals in the country and has made tremendous investments just in the last few decades.

[mlassoff]

My cousin had a baby at Yale New-Haven Hospital last year. (She lives in Woodbridge). They were very satisfied and minor complications with the delivery handled well.

[nico7]

Yale is great for advanced procedures, but you are probably best off with a place that does lots of routine stuff and is not a teaching hospital. Women have been giving birth for a long time -- hospitals have less experience with it.

If you have the option to do a little research, I would identify a CLEAN hospital (i.e., not a lot of nosocomial infections, like hospital-acquired MRSA, etc...) that routinely perform deliveries, and don't have a teaching program.

[Tetto]

Originally Posted by Stylo

St. Raphael is Yale now, they were just bought out. They have a good reputation too. Also that must've been quite a long time ago and things change, and doctors come and go. Yale is considered one of the best hospitals in the country and has made tremendous investments just in the last few decades.

Yale is considered one of the best by some people not all. There are many flubbed procedures in the past several years, two people whom I personally know. I work in the business and know many Yale docs; the ones I know I wouldn't hesitate to recommend, but I've heard the inside stories from those who know. All in all, it very good but certainly not the best in the country.

[AnonChick]

I've never heard of anyone born at Yale who was "born special" as the result of a doctor going too far up the canal during the last trimester. I've never heard of that happening, anywhere, ever. Perhaps your sister was "special" already? I'm not sure what you mean by "special" either; that's not exactly a sound medical diagnosis.

I was with a friend of mine when she had to have an emergency C-section (18 hours of hard back labor with no dilation at all even after pitosen). The doctors and nurses were all amazing, professional and polite, gave me all the information I was authorized to have (I'm not a blood relative or significant other), and took very very excellent care of both my friend and her newborn son.

Pretty much everyone I know was born either at Yale or St. Rae's, including most of my family on my mother's side. I have encountered thousands and thousands of people in my life from this area of the state, and not once have I heard a nightmare story about anyone born "special" as the result of a doctor doing something wrong. In fact, at 8 months, the baby is most likely to be facing feet first, or possibly butt-first, so it's not likely at all, that a doctor's finger, or medical instrument, would even be touching the baby's head during any kind of routine exam.

Also, no doctor's instrument would be able to get past the cervix and the amniotic sac during the 8th month, unless there was already something wrong with the sac or the cervix was already dilated, which would indicate trauma to the baby -before- the doctor ever got an instrument near the baby.

Sorry OP, I'm just sensing that there's a lot more to the situation than you are telling. And perhaps it's more complicated than your mother is explaining.

[nico7]

Originally Posted by Tetto

Yale is considered one of the best by some people not all. There are many flubbed procedures in the past several years, two people whom I personally know. I work in the business and know many Yale docs; the ones I know I wouldn't hesitate to recommend, but I've heard the inside stories from those who know. All in all, it very good but certainly not the best in the country.

You also have to consider that Yale accepts riskier cases and procedures because the hospital and medical school are working to advance the state of medicine. But if you have a routine procedure, there is no reason to choose Yale over any other busy hospital with good antiseptic procedure. The physicians and nursing staff at any busy hospital will have plenty of experience with routine procedures. The factors that matter -- which are not completely (but, I hope, chiefly) controlled by the doctors and nurses -- are how clean the operating rooms and recovery areas are and (sadly) how well they can expedite paperwork. To me, those are the things that define an effective hospital for routine use (advanced things require specialized expertise like that at Yale). Also might want to throw in there, "Keeping loved ones informed and comforted."