Presently midwifery is illegal in the Yukon. The Yukon has
not had a practicing midwife or traditional birth attendant
for several years.... The Yukon is a huge and sparsely
populated chunk of land. Most of its people live in or very
close to Whitehorse. Outside town there are 12 other
communities, the largest having a population of just a few
hundred, most having 30-100. The communities are all quite
far apart...and some are completely inaccessible by road
most or all of the year.
Women are flown to Whitehorse (and some to Vancouver) at
least two weeks (and up to four or five) before their EDD
and are put up in hotels/motels...or whatever to wait for
their baby to be born. They are separated from their
families, isolated in a town overrun with crack, cocaine,
heroin and alcohol, child prostitution and every other
addiction you can imagine packed into eight square blocks,
and birth in a hospital that, despite being one of the best
for maternity care I have ever seen, still maintains that
they have an extremely low epidural (and other
intervention) rate. Little mention is made of the horrendous
amounts of morphine administered to women in labor, of
course.
...Once in a blue moon a woman will show up on the step of
one of the community nursing stations in labor, having kept
her pregnancy quiet, or having been too busy with her
several other children to seek out any prenatal care. She
will deliver quickly, pack up her things and disappear
again. Maybe one of the aunties will help her; maybe she did
a little prenatal care for her. Maybe not. Traditional
midwifery is not completely non-existent, but almost so,
and there seems to be little trust in it, and even less use
of it.
The Midwifery Planning Group is...trying to build a
practice and spearhead the public awareness side of
midwifery in the north. The goal of the group has been to
get funding for midwifery and, as it goes, the group has
mostly concerned itself with finding ways to dance with the
government to that tune...
The MPG has drafted...a discussion paper outlining what
midwifery could look like in the territory. The paper had
been approved by Cabinet to go to the House in the fall
sitting. Then an election was called, we had a complete
change of government and midwifery got pushed aside...BUT,
we came dangerously close to getting midwifery regulated
without any public input or community awareness.
So many questions remain. How do we help women in isolated
communities to birth with dignity and freedom, to trust
themselves, to not be separated from their families? Who in
their communities will provide midwifery services and how
will they go about doing so? And what can we do to help?
Where do we start? I am looking for ideas, stories, advice,
experience.... I have a feeling that a birth center would be
a great thing in Whitehorse, that this is a step that many
people here would take toward normal birth, but that still
leaves much unsolved in the other communities. If you have
any input, please do share. I can be reached at
(867)333-1758, P.O.Box 10501, Whitehorse, Y.T. Y1A 7A1 or
heatherbennetts@hotmail.com.
-Heather Bennetts, community midwife
Reprinted from Midwifery Today E-News (Vol 2 Issue 31 August 2, 2000)
To subscribe to the E-News write: enews@midwiferytoday.com
For all other matters contact Midwifery Today:
PO Box 2672-940, Eugene OR 97402
541-344-7438, midwifery@aol.com, Midwifery Today
|
|