Palos Community Hospital

Congratulations! While my children are adopted....I do have other types of Northwestern/Prentice Women's Hospital and Palos Community Hospital experiences. I just would like to remind you that NW is at the top of most every quality list for a good reason. And since you had good experiences there....why change if not absolutely necessary? It is just that Community hospitals are good...but why settle for good when great isn't too far away? Whatever you select ..I wish you the best with your exciting family expansion! :))

I've only heard good things about Palos. I delivered at Northwestern & IL Masonic. But now live south so I will definitely go to Palos if we have more kids. The only thing I know some people don't like is the visiting hours. They are very limited and the babies all have to be in the nursery during the visit. Good luck!

Hi K.,
My name is S., and while I have not delivered at Palos I do work there in L&D, so I am quite familiar with the place. The hospital is nice, clean, all private LDRP rooms (so the room you are admitted in you stay in until you go home, everything happens in one place). The visiting hours are pretty strict and limited, husband can be there 24hrs/day, baby's siblings and grandparents can visit from 11-8:30 (they can also visit the first 2 hrs after delivery if you deliver outside of 11-8:30 hours), ALL other visitors can come from 6-8:30 and the baby must stay in the nursery during those hours and viewed through the window. You can chose to room-in with baby or have the baby stay in the nursery overnight, there are lactation nurses 6 days a week. I think most of the nurses and most of the doctors a very nice. Do you have a doctor with Palos? They have a Level II Special Care Nursery, if a baby had serious complications would most likely get transferred to Christ Hosp in Oak Lawn. Anesthesiologists are available 24hrs/day for epidurals or emergency c-sections. The hospital/docotrs are for the most part not very supportive of natural labor. So if you wanted to deliver without IVs/medications, be mobile thru most of your labor, etc, it will be challenging at Palos. If that is something you desire I could give you a doctor recommendation that would be most compatible with those requests. Hope this information helps, let me know if you have any further questions, I have made my email address available to you. I am sorry to say I am not familiar with Northwestern Memorial, so I do not know how the two compare. Good luck with everything.
S.

I have never heard anything bad about the hospital. The only downfall is that infants are not allowed to stay in the room during visiting hours.

Palos is very calming, and the nurses are wonderful. The only drawback (which was on my mind, ever so slightly) was that in the event of an emergency or serious problem, there is not a neonatal unit on site. They do have neonatologists on duty, but they would end up taking the child to Hope Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn (Christ Hosp), while the mother remains at Palos. I do NOT, however, recommend Christ Hospital to give birth. So, if your pregnancies/deliveries have been without incident, then yes, Palos is great.

Hi K., Congratulations on your soon to be. I delivered my son at PCH in September of '05 and was very pleased. I delivered my daughter at Christ 6 years ago and wasn't happy there even though they took good care of us, there were too many students. I enrolled my daughter in the big sister/brother class at PCH to get familiar with the staff and hospital itself, I recommend that if you have the time, it was nice for the older children to see the nursery and where you will deliver the baby. I liked the rooms at PCH and getting to stay in one place for the entire experience. The baby can room in if you are breastfeeding and there is no roommate which I loved. Most of the nurses are super ( I had one bad one out of several) who was a little short with me and rude, but overall my stay was great and they let me go home a day early at my request. Dr Janus was my ob and she delivered my son at 8 a.m. on call. I thought the food was good and you were able to pick from a menu all of your meals, very good service and comfort at PCH. You also have a private shower in your room as well as a television for labor. My only complaint was the one crabby nurse(who knows maybe she had a bad day) and the bed was a little hard so I asked for like 10 pillows, other than that I thought it was so much better than when I had my girl at Christ. I would have another baby there if I had to do again for sure. Best of Luck!! Holly E. in Chicago