Dr Rodke delivered my two sons, and she did a fantastic job with both births. I am quite convinced that in both cases she saved me from an unnecessary C-section. (Well, perhaps a C-section would have been necessary with a less skilled doctor.) TLDR: she is so good at delivering children, she will absolutely minimize your risk of having any unnecessary and unwanted interventions. She will also minimize your chance of having any tears. She has a single-digit C-section rate, and that's despite taking on many high-risk pregnancies. She hasn't missed a birth in decades. She will be there, in the hospital with the mother, the whole time. She is incredibly knowledgeable, and despite her fame and popularity in the crunchy circles, she's actually quite conservative medically. (I'll explain what I mean below.) She's tenacious, smart, flexible and kind.
OK, now some more details. My first baby was breech 5 weeks prior to my due date, and that's why I switched to Dr Rodke at 35 weeks. Best medical decision I have ever made. I did fret the cost, but my out-of-network insurance ended up covering quite a bit of it (do call your insurance provider for details.)
So how did I end up switching to Dr Rodke? My previous practice had told me they would deliver my breech baby vaginally, if safe, only to do a complete 180 on me 5 weeks before my due date. They called me irresponsible and uninformed for wanting a vaginal birth. They kept calling me to schedule a C-section until I printed out a copy of the most recent ACOG guidelines concerning breech delivery and showed it to them. That's when they finally admitted that the real reason was their fear of their malpractice insurance rates skyrocketing. So there it is. Dr Rodke isn't even being particularly "crunchy" when she delivers breech babies. She simply follows the evidence-based ACOG guidelines. And she is, I believe, the only obstetrician in Manhattan to be honest and determined enough to do so.
Dr Rodke knows her field, and she refuses to settle. This is true not just for breech deliveries. My previous practice had me do an amniocentesis, which - as I later discovered - was completely unnecessary because it had no predictive value in my case. When I told Dr Rodke about it during our first appointment, she knew it right away. ("The amnio wouldn't tell you anything in your case.") My jaw dropped. This doctor, even before I was her patient, knew more about my quite obscure condition than the doctors in my previous practice whom I trusted to do some research before subjecting me to a unnecessary procedure.
Anyway, my baby ended up turning around many times before the delivery and finally ended up head down, but with his arm being stuck in the wrong place. Dr Rodke was able to correct the problem. Despite the problematic presentation and the baby's huge head, I only suffered a very small tear and almost no postpartum problems. I left the hospital within the first day after my baby was born.
My second son was born three years later. I was feeling overconfident at that point, and didn't repeat any of the preparations that I had done with my first. After all, my first labor was actually fun, and second-time mothers should only push for some 20 minutes on average, amiright? OK, perhaps that's true on average, but the size of my second son's head was off the charts, and I ended up exhausted, out of shape and pushing for 3 hours. Which doctor would have sat in the hospital with me through all of this (and that's after being there for many hours of my labor) without suggesting a C-section a single time? The baby's heartbeat was checked on a regular basis, and since it was strong, the doctor wasn't concerned. In the end, the baby was born beautiful and healthy, with perhaps the longest head the nurses had ever seen in their lives, and I didn't suffer a single tear. I was ready to leave the hospital a couple of hours later.
So is there anything I didn't like about being Dr Rodke's patient? I should probably mention that the wait times in her office were sometimes quite long. This means that if you're on a tight schedule, you should make sure to let the office know when you call. Also, as great as Dr Rodke is, I do recommend looking into getting a good doula, too. The doctor will be there to deliver the baby and do everything a (fantastic) doctor or a (highly skilled) midwife would do, but she's not there to do the doula's (or a partner's) job on top of that.
The bottom line is that Dr Rodke is simply extraordinary at what she does. She refuses to settle for anything that's not the best for the baby and mother. There's this great article by Atul Gawande called "The Bell Curve". I recommend everyone read it. It's about how there is a bell curve for doctors' performance, just like "there is a bell curve in all human activities, and the differences you measure usually matter." Dr Rodke is likely the best obstetrician in the NYC area, and it shows in her patients' outcomes. read more
