Giving Birth in NYC Right Now: What the Nursing Strike Is (and Isn’t) Showing Us
Monday, January 26, 2026
If you’re expecting a baby in New York City this winter, there’s a good chance you’re holding more than the usual mix of excitement and nerves—especially amid the intense weather and ongoing nursing strikes at New York–Presbyterian, Mount Sinai, and Montefiore hospitals.
In the last two weeks, we heard from several Birthsmarter clients who experienced long wait times, rescheduled inductions, and poor communication from nurses. Our immediate question mirrored what many of those families were asking us: Is this because of the strike?
Whenever we’re faced with a moment that calls for critical thinking, we try to use the Birthsmarter Framework ourselves. We start by looking at physiology—what is universally true about birth. Then we consider the broader societal context. And finally, we explore individual and personal circumstances.
To better understand what’s happening inside NYC Labor & Delivery units right now, we spent much of last week speaking with doulas, midwives, and OBs across the city. And honestly, what we learned surprised us. With our own lingering COVID-era PTSD, we were bracing for horror stories. Instead, what we heard was far more familiar.
While the strike may be adding strain, the experience inside Labor & Delivery units themselves appears relatively unchanged. For better or worse, that means what many families are encountering—especially when navigating triage and admission, like delays, bottlenecks, short tempers, and rescheduled inductions—are long-standing realities of giving birth in a large, high-volume city.
In other words: this is a useful moment to zoom out and consider the societal context.
Even without a strike, there are days every single month in New York City when Labor & Delivery units are at or near capacity. Over the past twenty years, the city’s hospital landscape has shrunk and consolidated significantly. Independent hospitals like St. Luke’s and Beth Israel have closed or been absorbed into larger systems, resulting in fewer total beds—even as the population, and the number of births, has not declined at the same pace. These pressures predate the strike and make it more important than ever to support nurses.
It’s time we all admit that caretaking work, like nursing, isn’t a “calling.” It’s a job. Nursing is skilled, demanding, emotionally and physically taxing work that deserves fair pay and humane working conditions.
Jen Hamilton, a Labor & Delivery nurse and social media educator, has called this out recently. It’s important for expectant parents to understand that safe nursing standards are typically 1:1 or 1:2 at most. In NYC hospitals, however, there are times when Labor & Delivery nurses are responsible for anywhere from three to ten patients at once.
Safe care in labor and delivery depends on having enough registered nurses to match patient needs—particularly during active labor, complex cases, and when continuous monitoring is required.
What Can You Do to Have the Best Birth in a NYC Hospital?
One of the most important things to understand is that hospitals assign rooms based on acuity, not arrival time. Acuity means how medically urgent your labor is in that moment. Someone who is further along in labor will be prioritized over someone earlier, even if the second person arrived first.
For example, someone at seven centimeters will be prioritized over someone at four. Even when two people arrive at the same dilation, a third-time parent may be prioritized over a first-time parent.
In smaller hospitals around the country, where demand is lower, there may be enough rooms for everyone at once. It may be possible to labor for 10–20 hours without pressure for augmentation or cesarean birth. In NYC, however, there is often a time clock—because someone else is going to need your bed.
With that reality in mind, one of the best ways to avoid the “DMV vibes” of early admission—and reduce the likelihood of unnecessary medical interventions—is to deeply understand physiological birth, know when and how to stay home longer (when it’s safe), and feel confident about when it’s actually time to go in.
This is especially important for first-time parents. Labor can take a very long time. While averages are hard to pin down, it’s common for a first labor to last around twenty-four hours—and sometimes longer.
That can be surprisingly hard to wrap your head around, especially when one of the biggest fears we hear is not making it to the hospital in time. Many parents imagine giving birth in a car or in the lobby of their building. In reality, even with a 60–90 minute drive to your birth location—from Brooklyn or Queens into Manhattan—you are overwhelmingly likely to make it.
We’ll be writing more soon about the signposts of early labor. In the meantime, we strongly recommend taking a comprehensive childbirth education class (our On-Demand Birth Class is available right away!). Learning about physiological birth and the patterns of normal labor helps you distinguish between what is intense but typical, how to stay calm and cope with contractions at home, and when it’s truly time to go.
Of course, making these decisions also depends on having a supportive medical provider. In other cities, hospital culture and protocols can vary dramatically within a city, making hospital choice incredibly important. In New York City, differences in care more often come down to your individual midwife or OB-GYN (or practice), not the hospital itself.
We discussed how providers interpret data and make decisions in our latest post on Fetal Monitoring.
There are a handful of OBs and midwives who truly support physiological birth, and they practice at all the major hospitals in NYC. You can find our preferred list of providers by downloading our NYC Resource Guide, and explore whether you should work with a midwife or an OB.
Reach out if you have any questions!
Find live, virtual & on-demand classes and support groups near you: