Women's Care Florida - Winter Park OB-GYN

I am writing this review to help other mothers to find the best providers and supporters during their pregnancy and delivery, to have a positive experience and to be valued as intelligent and precious human beings who have the right to make their own choices about their bodies and babies.

I was very unhappy with Women's Care Florida - Winter Park OB-GYN and left their practice when I was about 33 weeks pregnant. Here is why:

They have a beautiful new building and many doctors and their location is great. That's why I originally started going there. I saw in my time going to their practice that they have many patients and now I think that this might be a reason why they don't feel the need to improve themselves. They already have a lot of ‘business’. To me, this IS the problem.


#1 They view their patients as a business transaction.

There is no real connection with the doctors.
You are in and out just like that.
If you ask too many questions, you sense that they are annoyed.


#2 They do not support natural birth.

If anyone watched ‘The Business of Being Born’ documentary, there is a doctor there who criticizes OB-GYNs who do not support natural birth but they pretend that they do. She says this is the WORST thing an OB-GYN can do.

Well, this is what Women's Care Florida - Winter Park OB-GYN is.
They so don't support natural birth but they hired a midwife because they see the increasing trend and demand for natural births.

Initially, my husband and I thought we could work with them and have a natural birth in the hospital.

But when I would tell them that I do not want n episiotomy and was ok with a natural tear, the doctor argued episiotomy was better (there are arguments on both sides and I agree with the arguments of a natural tear healing better than an episiotomy). I realized that in the middle of the birth, I wouldn't have the strength to convince them to do what I want.

The most shocking one was: when I asked the doc if she would wait to deliver the placenta until it stopped pulsating, she was shocked. She told me there is no reason since the baby will be on me and higher than the placenta, the placenta cannot keep sending stuff upwards into the baby anymore! Her utter ignorance on the issue appalled me so much that I lost all respect for their doctors and decided I could not trust them with the birth of my child anymore.

Then, I met with their midwife: she said she is on call one day of the week and I have no guarantee that I would be delivering with her.

All in all, their doctors all have this ‘arrogance’ and belittling of mothers who demand a natural experience: I always felt they had this demeaning tone as if saying I am the medical doctor who are you to question me with your backwards natural birth ideas…

#3 They are primarily concerned with avoiding litigation not what is best for mom and baby.

How do I know this? Because of the final experience I had with Women's Care Florida - Winter Park OB-GYN that made me to definitely decide to leave their practice.

One day, when I was 32 weeks pregnant, I started having very regular but completely painless contractions. I knew they were Braxton-Hicks but they continue 2-3 hours and were very regular. So I called Women's Care Florida - Winter Park OB-GYN and spoke with a nurse since it was after hours. I explained to the nurse that they were painless but regular and had been going on for a few hours. The nurse panicked and told me to rush to a hospital. I wanted to explain to her other factors, which might be helpful in understanding my situation (I had the exact same thing with my first pregnancy and it was false labor! But I couldn't even get to tell her that) but she literally yelled at me and pretty much said: Listen to me! You might be in labor and you MUST go to a hospital IMMEDIATELY!

You can imagine how panicked my husband and I were… and how upset… and how scared… We called friends to come pick up our older daughter and rushed to the hospital.

Guess what… Women's Care Florida - Winter Park OB-GYN ‘s on-call doctor did not even bother to show up. Gave the hospital’s nurse instructions over the phone. And after 2 hours and a bunch of tests to see if it was real labor (and a $3000 hospital bill) I was out of there with an advise from the sweet hospital nurse to just rest up…

No body from Women's Care Florida - Winter Park OB-GYN ever called me back to see how I was doing, if the contractions have stopped or if I would want to maybe make an appointment to see one of their doctors… nothing.

Then I realized that it was all to avoid litigation… in case it was labor. Even if there might be a 20% chance, they take the most extreme measures to protect their business. But they don't even stop and think: is this ‘unnecessary’ stress going to negatively impact the mother?

I look back at that day and think, even if it was false labor, the stress of rushing to the hospital could have started my preterm labor…

And just an anecdote to help you see the stark difference between a midwife and these assembly-line OB-GYN practices: after that hospital incident, we search for a midwife online, then spoke with 3 midwives and visited 2 of them. The one that we picked at the end… when I met her the first time (a week after the hospital incident) and was asking my questions, I told her what happened and ask her what she would have told me if she was my midwife at the time and I called her (which would have been a call directly to her on her cell phone by the way!): she told me that she would have told me to drink up a lot of water and sleep a few hours…

I then worked with Midwife [redacted] and had a truly amazing, life-changing experience. I saw how beautiful and fascinating the birth experience could be… Ever since I became a vocal advocate of natural births and home births…