Bush babies should be in a pram not a grave
Sept 2, 2023 19:45:38 GMT 8
Struth and cardimona like this
Post by NFA on Sept 2, 2023 19:45:38 GMT 8
They are Tonys and Charlies. They are Isabelles and Pipers. They are as much part of the family forever as any other child – they just never took that first breath. Mothers everywhere have a fear of this disaster – but in regional areas, it’s vastly more pronounced.
In a city, an ambulance has you in a hospital in half an hour. In the bush, a growing number of hospitals have zero capacity to birth a child – one of the most basic procedures an affluent Western society should be able to provide. To tell people overseas there are parts of Australia you can’t have
a baby, they would think you are referring to the Red Centre.
This is in regional towns. Where 98 per cent of your food comes from. The same places that have high schools, art galleries, trendy boutiques and sophisticated restaurants.
Every year, the list of where women can give birth shrinks. A year ago, Katie, a farmer from northern NSW, bundled her belly and babies into a car and drove six hours for a planned C-section in 10 days.
Piper was stillborn before she could get to her hospital. On the anniversary of Piper’s death, Katie is pregnant again.
She is getting ready for the logistical nightmare of birth, with a private obstetrician and two consultants. If she were not deemed high-risk, like every other regional woman in her area, she would get a different midwife for every appointment and have to explain Piper’s death to a new face
every check-up.
With her private obstetrician, each teary scan ends with her doctor holding her hand and hugging her. “It took for my baby to die before I got that support,” she said.
Between 32 and 35 weeks, she will move her other children six hours away to be near a high-risk clinic. At 36 weeks, she is scheduled for a C-section, organising her sister to attend appointments, parents to look after children. Including transport, accommodation, diesel, and the birth itself, the bill she will wear – not the taxpayer – is well over $8000.
Katie has a hospital down the road but no one can give birth there. There’s no point calling an ambulance to take you to hospital because there’s no hospital that will take her. The best hope is the paramedic knows how to deliver the baby. Many here do.
“Proximity is everything,” Katie said. “If you are worried about fetal movement and your hospital is six hours away, you won’t do the drive, you will sit on it.”
Saving money bypassing regional maternity units is like providing cost savings by ripping up the roads or burning down the schools to cut education bills. Treasury has forecast Australia’s population increasing to 40 million, but rural birth units, maternity wards and regional hospitals are being starved billions of dollars as access to them for women who live outside cities shrinks.
If you are a male farmer bitten by a snake, they don’t leave you to wander the countryside looking for appropriate emergency care – they fly you out.
But if you are a female farmer having a baby, they make you leave town to find your own arrangements at your own expense.
More than 40 per cent of rural maternity wards closed between 1992 and 2011. Over the past decade, Queensland Labor has closed 37 maternity wards. In NSW, state-of-the-art birth suites are built and never staffed and “birth before arrival” rates are soaring.
The Albanese government’s Intergenerational Report last week found major cities tended to have lower fertility rates while “regional areas have fertility rates much closer to the replacement rate”. So what are our states doing? Shutting down the regional maternity wards.
If you want millions of future taxpayers, you must support Australian women birthing.
Next week, public hearings into birth trauma in NSW will hear how women, families and health workers are traumatised by underpaid and overstretched rural workforces.
NSW obstetrician and gynaecologist Maria del Pilar Luna Ramirez, the head of department in Lismore, said specialists “have little motivation to work rural”, “are extremely scarce and at the mercy of having locum specialist that comes for days at a time and has no involvement or interest
in making the service grow”.
In May, a senate inquiry found rural and remote women have higher rates of unplanned pregnancies, infant mortalities, low birthweights and preterm babies, which get worse the further they are from a city.
That committee recommended birthing services in non-metropolitan public hospitals must be available for all pregnant women.
Stillbirth claims more children’s lives in regional areas than our national road toll, yet where is the advertising campaign for them?
A child born at full term is not anonymous. Their mothers still lactated and had no mouth to feed.
If we prioritised the safety of babies in regional areas, Piper would be in a pram, not a grave.
In a city, an ambulance has you in a hospital in half an hour. In the bush, a growing number of hospitals have zero capacity to birth a child – one of the most basic procedures an affluent Western society should be able to provide. To tell people overseas there are parts of Australia you can’t have
a baby, they would think you are referring to the Red Centre.
This is in regional towns. Where 98 per cent of your food comes from. The same places that have high schools, art galleries, trendy boutiques and sophisticated restaurants.
Every year, the list of where women can give birth shrinks. A year ago, Katie, a farmer from northern NSW, bundled her belly and babies into a car and drove six hours for a planned C-section in 10 days.
Piper was stillborn before she could get to her hospital. On the anniversary of Piper’s death, Katie is pregnant again.
She is getting ready for the logistical nightmare of birth, with a private obstetrician and two consultants. If she were not deemed high-risk, like every other regional woman in her area, she would get a different midwife for every appointment and have to explain Piper’s death to a new face
every check-up.
With her private obstetrician, each teary scan ends with her doctor holding her hand and hugging her. “It took for my baby to die before I got that support,” she said.
Between 32 and 35 weeks, she will move her other children six hours away to be near a high-risk clinic. At 36 weeks, she is scheduled for a C-section, organising her sister to attend appointments, parents to look after children. Including transport, accommodation, diesel, and the birth itself, the bill she will wear – not the taxpayer – is well over $8000.
Katie has a hospital down the road but no one can give birth there. There’s no point calling an ambulance to take you to hospital because there’s no hospital that will take her. The best hope is the paramedic knows how to deliver the baby. Many here do.
“Proximity is everything,” Katie said. “If you are worried about fetal movement and your hospital is six hours away, you won’t do the drive, you will sit on it.”
Saving money bypassing regional maternity units is like providing cost savings by ripping up the roads or burning down the schools to cut education bills. Treasury has forecast Australia’s population increasing to 40 million, but rural birth units, maternity wards and regional hospitals are being starved billions of dollars as access to them for women who live outside cities shrinks.
If you are a male farmer bitten by a snake, they don’t leave you to wander the countryside looking for appropriate emergency care – they fly you out.
But if you are a female farmer having a baby, they make you leave town to find your own arrangements at your own expense.
More than 40 per cent of rural maternity wards closed between 1992 and 2011. Over the past decade, Queensland Labor has closed 37 maternity wards. In NSW, state-of-the-art birth suites are built and never staffed and “birth before arrival” rates are soaring.
The Albanese government’s Intergenerational Report last week found major cities tended to have lower fertility rates while “regional areas have fertility rates much closer to the replacement rate”. So what are our states doing? Shutting down the regional maternity wards.
If you want millions of future taxpayers, you must support Australian women birthing.
Next week, public hearings into birth trauma in NSW will hear how women, families and health workers are traumatised by underpaid and overstretched rural workforces.
NSW obstetrician and gynaecologist Maria del Pilar Luna Ramirez, the head of department in Lismore, said specialists “have little motivation to work rural”, “are extremely scarce and at the mercy of having locum specialist that comes for days at a time and has no involvement or interest
in making the service grow”.
In May, a senate inquiry found rural and remote women have higher rates of unplanned pregnancies, infant mortalities, low birthweights and preterm babies, which get worse the further they are from a city.
That committee recommended birthing services in non-metropolitan public hospitals must be available for all pregnant women.
Stillbirth claims more children’s lives in regional areas than our national road toll, yet where is the advertising campaign for them?
A child born at full term is not anonymous. Their mothers still lactated and had no mouth to feed.
If we prioritised the safety of babies in regional areas, Piper would be in a pram, not a grave.
