Steph Burns

Review of Long Beach Memorial Medical Ce...

My son was born here via C-section in November 201...

My son was born here via C-section in November 2018 after 32 hours of labor. Absolute worst nightmare from start to finish. Five terrifying and excruciating attempts to insert the epidural. Then the anesthesia during surgery COMPLETELY WORE OFF and they had to tie my arms to the table because I was grabbing at my abdomen, panicking and screaming bloody murder. Those are my first memories with my son, thinking I was going to die and never meet him, and the sound of both of us crying and screaming.

Then in recovery, my husband and I didn't sleep more than 30 min. to an hour at a time for FOUR DAYS STRAIGHT because people NEVER STOPPED coming into our room for every ridiculous reason, like CHANGING A LIGHTBULB in the bathroom 2:00AM or refilling our water pitcher at 7:00AM after asking them over and over again to leave us alone. It was absolutely maddening being almost completely deprived of sleep AFTER A TRAUMATIC SURGERY I've never be so exhausted in my life, I felt like I was going crazy.

My son had jaundice, and instead of just treating it with the light therapy, they pricked and squeezed blood out of his heels a total of 14 TIMES over the course of several days to "check his levels." WHY???? They were high, why not just give us the damn lights????

Then to top it all off, after many, many painful attempts to breastfeed and finally giving in to formula feeding (which they were adamantly opposed to), and feeling completely defeated, a nurse came in and grabbed the formula bottles off the shelf and said, "I need to hide these, we're a breastfeeding hospital. This looks bad on the nurses." I was livid.

After all that, they wouldn't give us even a dime off our bill. We're paying them $3,550.00 out of pocket after our insurance paid $34,575.00. I wouldn't wish this experience on any mother. If you can somehow give birth someplace else, FOR GOD'S SAKE, DO IT. This hospital is a torture chamber full of inept and callous a-holes.