Despite having been through childbirth twice, I’m having to go through a number of “firsts”.
- This is the first time I have had a baby in Australia.
- This is the first time I am booked in to have the baby in a hospital.
My first daughter was a water birth in a Midwife-Led Unit. My second was a home birth that was complicated by a post-partum haemorrhage where I lost over 2 litres of blood. I was told afterward that if I was ever to have another baby, it must be in a hospital.
So I have been trying to get my head around the way the maternity hospital system works here, and it’s even more complicated by the fact that childbirth is available on private health insurance here in Australia, whereas in the UK it is not. So my choices here in Brisbane are very limited.
I was “bounced” from the Mater Maternity in South Brisbane (all shiny and new) because it is too full, and told to go to Ipswich instead.
So I visited Ipswich Hospital Antenatal and Maternity Departments on Monday to check it out. And I left literally in tears.
How could I have my baby here? The place was dirty, the furniture and walls old, rubbish on the floors and bathrooms that looked like they were last cleaned in 2008. We couldn’t even find a place to park our car when we arrived – the huge multi-story car park next door had a sign outside saying FULL. The receptionist in the foyer confessed it is very rarely otherwise.
Compared to my first two birthing experiences, the thought of having to deliver my baby in Ipswich was pretty much my definition of hell.
But now that I’ve had a few days to calm down and reflect on the situation, I find myself asking a really important question: is this an opportunity for me to just be grateful?
Let me explain.
Following my haemorrhage last year, I became very interested in the work being done by the UN and organisations such as Unicef to improve maternity mortality rates in the 
developing world. In countries such as Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, they are so high that there is a 1 in 6 chance of the mother dying in childbirth. The vast majority of these are entirely preventable deaths caused by isolation from hospitals, lack of skilled attendants present, basic hygiene, nutrition and even family/gender prejudices and ignorance. You can read the Unicef report on Maternal and Newborn Health for yourself by clicking here.
In my case, I was incredibly fortunate to have been tended to by a team of doctors, midwives, ambulance staff and paramedics who all came together the morning Sophia was born, to save my life.
Almost one and a half thousand women who die every day from similar causes are not as fortunate.
So should I call my GP and demand that I be allowed to birth elsewhere? Should I raid my finances to afford a private birth in a “nice” hospital? Or should I be grateful that at least I have a hospital to give birth in, where there are staff who know what to do, where there is a bed to lie on, where there is a bathroom and not a hole in the floor.
I don’t know what the answer is. But I am reminded, at least, that I am blessed enough even with things as they are.
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