I don't know what to say in mine.
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I don't know what to say in mine.
BellyBelly Member
Trillian, Michael and Skye....
Neenee - what they're looking to hear about from mums are your personal experiences of birthing in the current system. Whether you found the system met your needs in terms of choices for care, and whether your expectations were met with care you did receive. If not, what would you have liked to see improved?
For example for mine, I will talk about how the only options given to me when I was pregnant with my first child were public or private hospital care. I had no idea about independent midwives or the safety of homebirth...in fact I didn't even know Australian women could have homebirths. I experienced a highly intervened labour involving a number of practices which are not supported by evidence, for example breaking my waters, intravenous antibiotics without presence of an infection or reason to think I would develop one, syntocinon under circumstances where it wasn't yet necessary. I'll probably mention the early breastfeeding difficulties we experienced and the (total) lack of assistance despite the fact that I live in the middle of a major capital city. I'll also talk a little about some of the "stand out" experiences I've had in hospitals supporting other mothers.
Finally, you can make some suggestions for improvements.
The big things are:
1. Provider numbers for Independent midwives. This will enable mothers to claim for their services through medicare.
2. Addressing the lack of indemnity insurance for IM's. This lack of professional insurance is a guarantee that a good proportion of qualified middies are "scared off" independent practice because it is too risky for them personally to not be insured.
3. Rural access to maternity services - the closure of maternity wards in rural areas seeing low risk, healthy women travel ridiculous distances to birth.
4. Addressing the issues in the way our system is structured that sees a high proportion of low risk women under the care of obstetricians - who are proven to intervene in their pregnancies and labours more often than midwives, with no improvement in outcomes. Intervention can be life saving when it's needed, when done "just in case" it increases risks for mother and baby.
5. Support for breastfeeding - wider access to subsidised lactation consultants and implementation of the other recommendations that came out of the previous governments breastfeeding inquiry.
OK off you go
Last edited by Tobily; October 2nd, 2008 at 08:44 AM.
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done, sent, and the links forwarded to my local doula and other mums
Dear Ms Bryant,
As a woman in her forties trying to have another child in a small town, I have been distressed and disappointed with the lack of services available to pregnant women in the Coffs Harbour area. In February of this year, a routine ultrasound at 9.5 weeks gestation revealed that my baby’s heartbeat and growth had stopped at around the 7.5 week mark. I was advised by my GP to go to Emergency at Coffs Harbour Health Campus for a D&C. My fianc? and I waited fourteen hours, grieving and in pain, to be examined by a doctor. When I was finally taken up for the surgery there was a mistake in the admissions process, I was never given pre-op meds, and the surgeon I had spoken to beforehand wasn’t the one who actually did the D&C.
I was sent home with no post-op instructions, no painkillers, and no antibiotics, with no appointment for a follow-op checkup either. Later that week I was back in emergency with retained products of conception and waited another 12 hours to be examined. I was never offered grief and loss counselling, never seen by a social worker, and not even referred for genetic counselling . The stress of being left to miscarry on my own in the waiting room has contributed greatly to the grief and loss I have suffered. The Coffs Harbour Pregnancy Care Service is brand new – I had children in Coffs Harbour in 1988 and 1992 and there was no ante-natal clinic there at that time, one of the factors that led me to have a home-birth with my youngest, as I received more care from the homebirth midwife than I had had from my OB with the twins in 1988. Another was the distance to a birthing unit – we lived 30km out of Coffs Harbour at the time.
I believe the Pregnancy Care Service is vital to the wellbeing and safety of the women of Coffs Harbour. I have struggled through three miscarriages so far this year to receive continuity of care, in a town where there are very few OB’s and at $180.00 per visit plus a six-week waiting list, are out of the price reach of most families in this low-income area. I am still trying to access specific grief and loss counselling, and follow-up care for complications arising from miscarriage and an ageing reproductive system. Lack of access to care is a primary reason why some women are choosing to not have children and particularly those of us in the older, high-risk category.
The bottom line is, if women cannot access suitable support services, they are being put at risk in their pregnancies.
Thank you for your time.
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Dragonfly - I had both my girls at CHHC. I lived in Nambucca Heads at the time, but couldn't go to Macksville.
I don't know about your experiences with the Coffs Obs, but I had the 3 that were around at the time & wasn't impressed with any of them.
But in saying that I had a much better experience there than in Dubbo - 2 hours away from where I am now.
In 2001/2 & 2004/5 I was never advised of any ante natal clinic in Coffs either. An Ob was the only choice. Which, yeah, cost a fortune. (One of the reasons I didn't see one with DD2.)
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up until may this year there wasn't any such thing as an antenatal clinic in Coffs. when i was having the twins in 1988, there was two OB's, Garland and Ghosh, and two GP's who would attend a birth. I was passed from doctor to doctor until i moved back up here from Wollongong, and had Ghosh for the last few weeks of the pg, whereupon he went on holiday and left me int he hands of an inexperienced locum. needless to say i had a horribly intervened-upon birth that nearly resulted in the death of myself and my son!
Garland is still practicing, and still prefers to do c/s than let a mother birth. the other two OB's are much better, Harvey Ward (who also is the Sydney IVF outreach) and Marylin Clarke, who works for the Pregnancy Care Clinic (the antenatal at the hospital) as well as her private practice. both are too expensive for me.
i chose a VBAC homebirth with my youngest, with a hospital trained English midwife, and it was the best choice i could have made. having said that, it was always onthe cards that i would rupture or have complications, and 30k from hospital was a worry, but i trusted her and my body/instincts, and it went smoothly.
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Garland, Goldman (Goldfinger) & Brimsmeed.
They are the three I met.
I was under DR Goldman (with the lovely nn), but ended up in labour with DR Garland for DD1. If you read my birth story he did want to take me for a ceaser coz it was taking too long!! I had DD1 myself a bit over an hour later thanks to my MIL saying no!
Goldman wanted to induce me 2 days before I was due to have DD1.
Never gave Brimsmeed a chance. I booked under him, but just saw my GP right up to the end. He came in after the birth of DD2, decided I didn't need stitches & that was it!
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it's all new to me, lol, i never thought i'd have a chance to have another as my ex didn't want any more kids. they're 20 and 16 now! lucky for me, DF is ready, willing, and able
still, living in a country town means that now Baringa Hospital has no birthing unit, there really isn't a choice at all.
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