This is mine, is it ok?, might need some help in the spelling department, not my strong point
Dear Mrs Bryant
I am writing in regards to the situation women are faced with when it comes to birthing their babies.
When it came to making the decision where I was to birth my second child, I thought it would be an easy one, I had health insurance so naturaly I would go to the closest private hospital.
Now please bare in mind that I was over two hours away from this hospital and the closest birthing public hospital which was Rockhampton. I could of gone to Emerald (two hrs in the other direction), but if there were any complications then I would of been shiped to Rockhampton. Our closest hospital didnt have a maternity ward so you couldnt birth there unless bub was already coming out.
So I was to go private, well that was untill I found out that if I went private I would not be able to get an epidural, the anethitist's in town had decided that none of them wanted to get out of bed to give a labouring women an epidural at two in the morning so they wouldnt give it to anyone no matter what time of day.
I wasnt realy sure if id need an epidural but I wanted that option and if I went private (something that I was going to be out of pocket $2000 if i did), then I would of had that choice taken away.
Ok, so now I was going public, it was decide that I would be induced on my due date due to the fact that I was so far from town and didnt want to run the risk of birthing my baby on the side of the road as the two women who had lived in our house had done prior to me, and the fact that we didnt have any family or friend in Rockhampton to stay with and couldnt afford to stay in a hotel for that long.
So my due date came and I was induced and five very painfull hrs later ( due to the fact that my body wasnt ready to give birth) my son was born.
I can't complain about the labur ward as it was lovely and the midwives that I had were great, but the maternity ward was something out of the stone age, it was freezing and I had 5 other people in the same room as me, 2-3 of these where sugical patients as the surgical ward had no beds left and at least one of them snored like a train everynight, so not only was I up every two hours feeding I was kept awake in between times aswell.
On the second day I was ready to go home but because my baby had very mild jaundice and I lived so far away they wanted to put him under lights, under suferance I agreed which I wish I had'nt. He was not put into a humidy crib as is normaly the case but striped and had a protable light placed over him, so here was my two day old baby with no clothes on in a freezing drafty room with nothing to keeo him warm but an ultra violet light. As the time went on his temperature droped repetadly and I would have to put him inside my clothes to warm him up, finaly at two in the morning with my baby screaming beacuse he was cold and me in tears because I was told not to take him out of the light a lovely Kiwi midwife came in and said to just pick him up and cuddle him, she said that the equipment that the hospital had was so out dated that it wasnt funny and it was riduculas to leave him like that.
So my question to you is do you think that this is ok, in a country like Australia that is so wealthy?
I would like to have a home water birth for my next child but at $4000 and with the change to the baby bonus I dont think we will be able to afford it, Can you tell me why I should miss out on this experience just because I have a morgage and household bills and dont have the extra monet to pay for it.
Why is it that in New Zealand free inderpendant midwives are availible but in Australia it is not.
I would like to see women have more free choices in where and how they birth their babies, weither they choose to do it at home or in a hospital, in water or on a bed, if they want to birth standing on their head then they should have the right to choose and have the support they need to do so with out being critisised by medical proffesionals.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, I do hope that when the time comes you and everyone else involved make the right decision's to benifit and provide this wonderful country's women with the services that we need, at the end of the day if we need more babys than should'nt it be right to provide a great maternity system to birth them in.
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