Paula D’Amore had already had two children when the birth of her third child took her by surprise. Her contractions began at 2:30 am and she felt that she could wait until around 5:30 before heading to the hospital with her husband.
Her contractions, however, intensified at a rate she wasn’t expecting, and she ended up having to tell her husband to stop and park in the fire lane of the hospital because the pain was getting to be too much.
Paula’s daughter, Daniella, was born in the backseat of the family car. Her husband, Joe, was the only person who helped deliver her. Although he’d rushed into the hospital to recruit the support of nurses and midwives, none of them arrived until after Daniella had already crowned.
The D’Amores were relieved that their daughter had been born with relatively little fuss – but they were entirely unprepared for how the hospital would handle them in the aftermath.
Paula had to wait nine hours until she could be admitted to a postnatal room, and nurses ran full blood tests on Daniella because they were convinced she had picked up bacteria from her “unsterile birth” in the backseat of the car.
The family had only intended on staying in the hospital for the minimum 24 hours post-birth, but they ended up staying for 48 hours – before being admitted to the NICU.
Although Daniella looked “almost obscenely healthy” compared to the other infants in the NICU, her doctors insisted on keeping her in for more tests, questioning if she had actually been contaminated with any bacteria, and prescribing her completely unnecessary antibiotics.
Finally, after three long days of these procedures with multiple doctors, the D’Amore family was finally allowed to return home to celebrate the newest member of their family.
Everything seemed to be all well and good – until the hospital bill arrived in the mail, totaling $7,431.34, because of all the unnecessary procedures that Daniella had undergone.
The D’Amore family fought these charges for eight months until the hospital finally dropped them, allowing them to save almost $11,000 total.
Paula is still furious about the amount of time and energy she had to spend fighting the hospital on these matters, but said once it was all over, “[Daniella’s] already made me feel so much stronger, and I'll never stop fighting for her.”
