Gentrifying Moms Opt for Manhattan Hospitals
Brooklyn may have been attracting an increasingly affluent set of young adults in recent years but, according to stats dug up by The Times, many of them are returning to Manhattan when it comes time to give birth. While hospitals in Brownstone Brooklyn have lost local patients at a rapid rate, the four most prominent…
Brooklyn may have been attracting an increasingly affluent set of young adults in recent years but, according to stats dug up by The Times, many of them are returning to Manhattan when it comes time to give birth. While hospitals in Brownstone Brooklyn have lost local patients at a rapid rate, the four most prominent Manhattan hospitals saw the number of births rise 31 percent between 1998 and 2008. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of living in Brooklyn, said Dumbo resident Nicole Reece. “[But] Manhattan has some of the best doctors in the country. I live 25 to 45 minutes away from them. Why would I not choose them? Interestingly, while the number of births at Methodist Hospital in Park Slope rose 40 percent over ten years, the number of births to mothers who live in Park Slope, Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens actually fell. The same pattern is also evident in Fort Greene, where only 16 local mothers crossed the river to give birth in 1998 but by 2008 that number was up more than tenfold to 169. While we suspect the phenomenon has something to do with people sticking with their Manhattan doctors in general when they move to Brooklyn, it also says something about the quality of care. The one serious experience that our family had in a Brooklyn hospital revealed such appalling (and almost deadly) levels of incompetence that we now avoid them at all costs. So let’s take a poll:
Manhattan Birth Certificate, Brooklyn Address [NY Times]
Brooklyn Moms Won’t Give Birth in Brooklyn Hospitals [Gothamist]
Graphic from The New York Times
Live in Clinton Hill. Had both babies at LICH. Great views of the Statue of Liberty.
To add to my comments above: in the article it states the hospitals don’t make a big profit on delivering babies but they want women to choose their hospital to give birth because it makes families loyal to the hospital. This is true. We are proof of that but in reverse – after our bad experience delivering our child at NY Methodist we changed our general practitioner, my OB/GYN and pediatrician all to practices at Cornell (and NYU in the case of the pediatrician).
To ENY: I think Kings County hospital reputation is such that women living out that way choose Methodist thinking it will be better because it’s in Park Slope. (And one would think so, right?)
this seems to shock everyone, but i had my baby at woodhull hospital in bushwick, and i had a great delivery there. i’m a pretty good prototype of what is considered the gentrifying brooklyn mom, and i stayed within my neighborhood to have my son at the county hospital. i had a planned home birth that lasted twenty six hours. i think that’s perfectly fine for a first baby, however my midwife disagreed and gave me an “ultimatum” like push or we go to the hospital, which was traumatic. again, this may seem strange to most people but i was so relieved when we got to woodhull. there was this totally compassionate punk rock type midwife on staff and she just tried everything in the book, where as in all the other home to hospital transfers i know of, the women get there to have a section. she was an angel and with her support i finally delivered my son, as per my birth plan, with no drugs or epsiotomy, etc. she later told me that most folks are completely ignorant to the fact that they have a state of the art labor and delivery with twenty natural birth advocate midwives revolving on staff. the ob was beyond understanding.
just like with the other brooklyn hospitals the aftercare in postpartum was hit or miss. i had one awesome nurse that helped me nurse and taught me about sticking witch hazel soaked pads in the freezer for pain management, and was so sweet to the baby. but most tried to give him a bottle and were just disconnected. if you demand certain things they would just cave and look at you like yr human finally. i think that’s just burn out fatigue, etc.
go woodhull midwives!!!
Lenox Hill for our son, and a good experience overall. My wife’s OB/GYN is based there… agreed that doctor affiliation is a factor. Have not done LICH under any avoidable circumstances for 25 years.
and it is Lenox Hill not Lennox. Always trying to change spelling of words to sound Canadian or something.
My wife had our first at Mt Sinai, went pretty well other than incompetent nursing helper. For our second one my wife had switched doctors and had baby at Beth Israel which was pretty horrible – clueless anthesiologist because usual one got called away on emergency, plus young resident who was also clueless – thankfully we had a great nurse, would have been better off alone with her than with the resident, and then our ob/gyn finished delivering another baby down the hall and took care of ours with no problem. My impression is that women tend to pick their ob/gyns and then just go to the hospital where they practice (of course as a guy what do I know)
In general there is a nursing shortage. The top nurses go to the top hospitals, but any nurse, even a surly and lazy one, can find a job.
I suppose I should have mentioned, since people are talking about those who go from Brooklyn to Manhattan to deliver, at the time my kids were born, we lived quite close to Lennox Hill. Having said that, it’s likely we would have made the trip had we already been living in Brooklyn as Mrs C continues to use the doctors she likes in Manhattan.
Delivered #1 at Lenox Hill, will do so for #2 as well.
IMO, “distance” is a silly reason for staying in BK. I was in labor for over 24 hours even before being admitted to the hospital. I choose where to give birth depending on my doctor’s and the hospital’s reputation, not because the hospital is 100 feet from my home. I’ve gone as far as Mt. Sinai for certain tests, and that, my friend, is a HAUL from Brooklyn.
Lastly, informal polls show that delivery nurses across the board are given much higher scores than post-partum nurses, who have the rep of being lazy, indifferent and/or uncaring.