Mothers need to be supported to have home births
TO all deputies, whom this ought to concern, we are now all familiar with the mantra ‘Stay home, save lives,’ well what if this is true about childbirth?
Women and babies with low-risk pregnancies are statistically as safe having midwife-supported home births as they are having hospital births. Home births avoid unnecessary medical intervention and avoid the potential of hospital-contracted infections.
Within the past 10 years a couple of new babies have sadly died needlessly at the Loveridge Ward, so the idea that mothers and babies are safer in hospital is a fallacy.
The cancellation of supported home births illustrates a power struggle over birth between the pregnant mother and the medical industry.
The Committee for Health & Social Care claims Guernsey midwives will no longer support home births due to a lack of staff. Yet, inexplicably, there has been no mention to the public about plans being put in place to hire more midwives to support this natural birthing option.
This is a wealthy island where cost of living is high and birthing resources ought to meet the basic human right to supported home births in this medicalised era wherein the experienced community elder-lady no longer supports home births, as was the case before the 1940s. The demand to reclaim childbirth from the medical system arose in the 1970s with the Women’s Movement and has been on-going for the past 50 years.
There are numerous families on Guernsey who were planning home births who are now left to have an unassisted birth. These families are being betrayed by the government and their birthing rights are being ignored.
On Jersey in 2021 there were 38 midwife supported home births. The Committee for Health & Social Care on Guernsey claimed in the media that there were only 15 midwife-supported home births here in the past five years – however, since home births were cancelled for two of the past five years this statistic is manipulative and may reflect the attitudes towards home birth within the committee.
If home birth was normalised on Guernsey as a safe and available option for pregnant mothers than we would see the percentage of home births comparable to Jersey.
If you are not a pregnant mother interested in home births, such as myself, and aren’t sure if this home birth issue ought to concern you, I urge you to think about your own mother when you were a vulnerable baby and she was birthing you into this world and she needed support, or your grandmother, or her mother, or the mother who came before her, back and back and back. The mothers who came before you needed support just as the birthing mothers today are in dire need of your support now.
KIRSTEN HIEGHTON-JACKSON