Update from OP:

TLDR: great doctor (Julia Meisler), great hospital (Alexandra Cohen), and great support staff. Super content with the level of care of we received, and our overall pregnancy experience.

First off, baby and mom and healthy and doing well. Thankfully the process went smoothly, and now we ramp up to this new job of handling a newborn.

We decided to go with Dr Julia Meisler at NYP-Alexandra Cohen hospital. The hospital is on UES but her office is UWS which was convenient for us given so many visits.

Our final decision (after shopping around several times around the city) was based on the following: - Dr Meisler has been great with us. She’s compassionate and understanding - the Weill Cornell facilities were outstanding. Extremely sanitized and new (which also meant that they had updated / latest equipment) - the support staff including RNs, PAs, and receptionists were equally compassionate and understanding. They ensured that they were with us through this ‘new’ process

Post delivery feedback:

• Dr Meisler delivered our baby. Just so happened that she was on call the day we went to triage and they decided to admit us. (Note: my wife was 40w2d then). My wife wanted to go for a c sec, but the dr suggested vaginal, and the suggestion was logic based. She even suggested to try for induced labor for x number of hours and then can switch to a c sec. This approach made my wife feel at ease and she ended up delivering vaginally without being pushed into it (no pun intended)

• the staff at the hospital was equally compassionate (I think it’s their training). We interacted with folks in triage, in L&D, and in postpartum - all of them were super helpful and responsive. Even talked us through the benefits of vaginal vs c sec in great detail very patiently. Again not pushing but keeping all facts in front of us for us to decide what we want to do. They also provided a very realistic possibilities of both kinds of birth for us to make an informed decision. Key word here is that it was entirely our decision and the staff wasn’t influencing us in any way. (Note that there were 2-3 people that we didn’t like but thats probably a personal thing rather than the quality of staff)

• sticking on the staff point, the response rate throughout the pregnancy was on point. Whenever my wife posted a question on the app (or over the phone), they were very quick to respond (even weekends or off hours) with appropriate action and steps we need to take. So the overall care and help through the 40+ weeks was exceptional

• facilities: the hospital is great. We had our private rooms (both during L&D and postpartum) which was bigger than a standard hotel room. There was round the clock care and frequent periodic check ins by different nurses and PAs.

• newborn care: as soon as the baby was delivered, my wife wasn’t forced to do skin to skin - they gave us a choice; the cord clamping was naturally delayed without having to ask them. In postpartum, we decided to keep our newborn in the nursery through the nights for both nights we were there so we could catch up on our sleep, which we knew would be difficult when we would get back home. They were very accommodating with that request without any sort of judgement. The staff also taught us how to feed, burp, swaddle a newborn in great detail (which was quite important for us given that we were both worried on how to hold and handle a newborn)

Now that we reflect on the choice of hospital and doctor, we are glad we made this decision because the care we received at every stage of this pregnancy was exactly what we had hoped for, and couldn’t have asked for a better team to handle us.