Mercy Family Birth Centre set to close

Birthing era set to end for Victorian mothers - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

https://www.facebook.com/events/263430067131968/

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Save our Family Birth Centre - Parents & Prams at Parliament

Thursday, 4 July 2013 10:00

Clear 16°C / 9°C

The Family Birth Centre is unique - it is the only one of its kind remaining in Victoria.

Join us with your prams and children on the steps of Parliament (Spring Street) and walk with us to the Minister's office (50 Lonsdale Street) to call for the Family Birth Centre to be saved from closure. (People without children also welcome!)

The Family Birth Centre provides a midwife led active birth experience, is woman centred and situated in a separate section of the hospital with its own clinical guidlines designed to increase the chance on a natural birth in a home-like environment.

The Mercy Hospital plans to close the family birth centre, and amalgamate it with the conventional labour ward.

Please join us and show that you want the Family Birth Centre to stay open.

It's about choice.

Find out more and sign the petition here: Save the Family Birth Centre | Greens MPs in Victoria

Invite your friends to join us - everyone is welcome and the more people we have the stronger the message.

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So sad to hear this. :-(

Currently the transfer rate in the birth centre is 40%. It's not a model that is working for women.

They are changing the structure to a caseload model so more women will be eligible, and more women will have a chance at a natural birth, instead of just a lucky few who meet and stick to the risk guidelines.

This is a good thing!

have you drunk the kool-aid?

To clarify, they aren't closing it - just simply changing the model. It will mean that women aren't transferred out anymore, and they will have the same midwife throughout - one to one care is a model that works. So many more women will benefit.

I had my first baby there and it was wonderful. There were a couple of issues with me being able to stay within their hospital imposed rules but my MW gave me a lot of support to avoid transfer (unbeknowns to me people were even starting to poke their heads in and try and get me transferred). I would NOT have had that birth in the hospital with their nonsense "caseload" system.

I urge everyone to sign the petition! Women deserve the right to choices and options.

It'll mean the monitoring equipment is right there and all the low risk births currently happening there will quickly become high risk with the cascade of intervention.

If drugs/instruments/interventions are there, they will be used. They will begin to seep in to more and more births. They will become 'routine'. The birth centre will lose what it has been, and become another hospital ward.

When i went on a tour at the new women's hospital in 2009, i asked about the birth centre (that was at the old women's), they fed the same line to me then that they had changed it so 'every room was like a birth centre'. Well, a potplant in the corridor and a nice picture on the wall does not take away from it being a hospital room. Having one to one care does not make a good birth if the hcp doesn't believe that women can birth naturally or have rights over their own bodies.

Yes many women transfer to the hospital, i wouldn't be surprised if this number has increased lately because the system keeps adding more conditions for women to be eligible. Many of the midwives fight hard for the women attending there, but they also have to work within the system. Being transferred is not necessarily worse than never attending the fbc at all. For those who saw women centred midwives during their care, they are often more comfortable in questioning treatment and speaking up for what they want for them and their babies.

It is not a perfect system, but it is a centre worth holding on to.

But those interventions ARE seeping into 60% of birth centre births - women who ARE low risk!

The highest chances of no intervention is Homebirth. The birth centre is still governed by the labour wards policies. It just looks friendlier.

Not every woman has the circumstances to organise a HB. The birth centre was at least an option. The inventions of certain monitoring cannot occur while the equipment is kept out of the room. Getting to narrow you choices of MWs down to the ones who want to work in the FBC also increases your chance of getting a woman-centred MW.

But the equipment is simply on the other side of the wall in the labour ward. Where 60% of women end up. The 40% who don't have "normal" labour which they will still have in a labour ward, with the added benefit of one on one midwifery care - this midwife WILL fight for women, including those who were previously deemed high risk to be considered. I feel like this will mean LESS interventions for more women. One on one care works.

If you are high risk, your one-on-one midwife is not there for *you*, she is there to monitor the equipment.
One-on-one care does not work with interventions.
Clearly, if the rules are that strict to get in to begin with and still 40% of women are being transferred, then the problem isn't the fact the birth centre existing.

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The highest chances of no intervention is Homebirth. The birth centre is still governed by the labour wards policies. It just looks friendlier.

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Yep, but it is way more friendlier now than if it is enveloped into the main hospital.

Not everyone is able to access homebirth. Taking away the fbc is just another step in eradicating women's choices.

Yep, the equipment may only be just down the corridor, but having that distance between the birthing woman and the equipment can make a big difference in their use.