Unprofessional and Faulty Staff Communication
When my wife and I had our first baby at Patewood, we had one of the worst/stressful experiences possible. This was not due to health complications the delivery was quick and our baby was heathy. The problems were caused by the staff not communicating to us or each other. My wife repeatedly told the nurses that our baby didn't seem like she was getting enough food. The staff brushed this off for a whole day and the next morning our baby was weighed and she had lost 8% of her original body weight. My wife continued to to state that our baby was always hungry and wanted to feed. The nurses said "She is just using you as a pacifier. Just give her you finger with a glove on it." the next morning (the morning we were to be discharge) our baby was weighed again and she had lost 10% of her body weight. We were then told that 10% weight loss was the cut off limit and they would not let us go home... The staff then made my wife feel like she was at fault and had her meet with lactation specialist and ran tests on our baby girl and made my wife use a breast pump for hours. Later that evening they finally offered us some formula for our baby almost three days after she was born. Our baby gained back 3% of her weight over night and the next afternoon they let us go home after more tests and check ups.
Nothing was wrong with our baby she has been healthy and continues to grow every day 🙂 and my wife's milk came in the same afternoon after getting home!
This could and should have been easily prevented if the staff of nurses had listened to my wife's concerns. This was our first baby and we were trusting the staff's advice to help us as we adjusted to our new life with our baby girl. We were miss lead.
We are very unsatisfied with the service we received, it caused my wife and baby days of discomfort and not to mention a full extra day of bills from the hospital and more tests.
I tried to communicate this situation to the hospital and and after 4.5 months of talking to customer service I finally hear back that they will do nothing to help or try to own up to the mistake they had made. I don't want to point fingers I just hope someone will read our story and it will prevent a similar situation from happening.
Thanks for reading!