Jacob Sonnhalter

Review of Tripler Army Medical Ctr

Do not give birth here if you have any other optio...

Do not give birth here if you have any other option! My wife and I had the unfortunate experience of having our first child here. Before my daughter's birth my wife and I were assured that we would have full control over the birth experience, that we would have a wonderful room with a jet tub and a place for me to sleep. When my wife went into labor she was promptly strapped to a bed with monitoring equipment against her wishes and totally unnecessarily. She the doctors and nurses REFUSED to disconnect her or even allow her to stand and walk to ease the labor pain. After about an hour and with her on the verge of a panic attack after repeated refusals, I refused to leave the nurses alone until they had her removed. My wife Whenwas in too much pain to use the jet tub so she told me to use it while we waited. The water came out in such a slow trickle that by the time it was halfway full it was stone cold. The doctor came in several hours later when it was time to give birth, they opened her legs and discovered my child was past crowning and was already beginning to be born. After the doctor finished the birth, my child was LITERALLY TOSSED to my wife and almost slid into the floor. She would have if I had not caught her. My daughter had an elevated temperature and heart rate (I'm guessing due to the stress) and she was promptly whisked off to the NICU without any time or chance to have any meaningful skin to skin contact. I walked down with her and got to witness 3 nurses attempt to insert an IV (and I am not exaggerating) at least 15 times. I lost count. All while my child was screaming in pain. After about an hour she calmed down while sucking a binky (still was never fed) and I went to go see how my wife was doing. I went to see my child after about an hour and when I walked back to the NICU I was told that there was no child under our name and if I was sure I was in the right place. They had a chalk board they kept track of the babies and this nurse told me "If she isn't on the board then she isn't in here.". I argued for about a minute or so before I just walked past the counter and into the room my child was in to prove that yes, my child was in fact in the NICU. I then had to wait about 15 minutes before I could even get an update on how she was doing. After this I was told to go back up and move into the postpartum room where they would bring our baby up. The room we were taken to had no working heat and the air conditioner was stuck on. I was told there was nothing they could do. My daughter was brought up and we my wife tried to hold her in the bed. The nurse chastised us for being irresponsible because my wife could fall asleep and drop her. We decided to just hold her anyway. After about an hour the room got so cold that my daughter was blue and shaking, but they still couldn't do anything. We kept her warm by snuggling her under our clothes against our skin. The nurse who came in next then berated us for allowing our daughter to be cold, and how could we be so irresponsible for holding her while in the bed. After she left I ended up pulling open the rusted over and painted shut window to let in the warm Hawaii air so my child wouldn't freeze. After things got settled and she warmed up we decided to call the family to share the good news! But there was zero cell reception, and the phones in the rooms only dialled local numbers. This is an issue considering that this is a military hospital and the majority of patients have family outside of Hawaii. To be able to call I needed to walk to the entrance of the hospital about a quarter mile away. I cannot overstate how terrible of an experience this was. With maybe 2 exceptions the staff were unhelpful, uncompassionate, and just rude. My wife suffers with PTSD from the entire experience and it has put our plans of growing our family on hold. The best part of the experience was leaving. If I could give negative stars I would. DO NOT GO HERE.