All three of my births were attended by midwives and I cannot say enough about the quality of care I received. So it’s too bad I’ve said very little.* Hey, a gal gets tired and lazy and can’t be blogging all the time when she’s pregnant, okay? Lay off.
So let me just say this. Midwives provided me with knowledge and understanding throughout my pregnancies. They gave me information and sought out my explicit consent about every test and procedure. They helped me be in control. Midwives taught me about the stages of labour and about birth and breastfeeding. They were in my apartment at the start of my very first labour telling me to get some rest. They were there when the anesthetist asked if there was a history of spina bifida in my family because surely it wasn’t the fault of his epidural that I only had pain relief on one side of my body; it must have been my fault. Midwives were there when my baby boy was finally born after days of labour and hours of pushing. And they rushed to my home to take his blood and bring it to the lab when he developed jaundice three days later. Midwives knew to duck when my water burst and hit the hospital wall while I was pushing out my second baby. Midwives made it just in time to catch my third baby at the end of my bed and I didn’t even have to leave my home for a week.
Midwives are very big part of how we became a family. They do good work. They do important work.
Right now women in Ontario have to choose between a hospital or a home birth. During the last provincial election campaign, however, Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberals promised a third option: birth centres.
Birth centres are independent sites located within communities where midwives provide comprehensive care during labour as well as prenatal and postnatal. They promote the normalization of birth while providing high-quality, evidence-based care. Birth centres would save our health care system a lot of money and open up hospital space and resources for the people who really need it.
Many women don’t want a medicalized hospital birth, but aren’t comfortable with a home birth either. It took me two midwife-assisted hospital births to even really consider that maybe we could do this at home. Birth centres are the perfect solution.
Ontario Midwives want to make sure the Liberals follow through with their campaign promise to fund birth centres in the next budget to be presented in March. You can show your support by sending an e-postcard to the premier right now. I just did and it’s super easy.
And now, a video.
* I guess I did write this post and this one and this one.
Full disclosure: The Ontario Midwives did send me a lovely mug and water bottle as a thank you for writing this post. This in no way affects the content of this post. This is not a sponsored post.