While Alberta midwives are celebrating the spring budget announcement of an $11 million increase to midwifery care over the next three years, long wait lists remain and there is work to be done if the province wants to meet its goal of boosting midwi
While Alberta midwives are celebrating the spring budget announcement of an $11 million increase to midwifery care over the next three years, long wait lists remain and there is work to be done if the province wants to meet its goal of boosting midwifery care from five to 10 per cent between now and 2020.
“The feedback is that this funding is enough to keep all the practices open and running but many midwives are working under capacity, ” said Nicole Matheson, president of the Alberta Association of Midwives.
“This is $11 million over three years - which means approximately 400 more families will receive care each year under this funding. ”
More than one-third of all women wanting midwifery care never see their way off a waitlist.
“Currently in Alberta we are only able to accept approximately 65 per cent of the women that request midwifery care … as one can imagine, waitlist is a difficult term when talking about pregnancy as babies do not wait. ”
The Cochrane Community Midwives is Cochrane's solo midwifery care centre.
Since Shianna Pace took ownership of the clinic some two and a half years ago, the staff has grown from two to five midwives.
While it was only then that the centre - which was operational for several years prior to Pace's takeover - opened in its Sunset Trading Post location, the midwives will be moving to their new location at 118 3rd Ave. West by early fall.
“The centre will be named the Shifra Centre For Wellness and will be a multi-practitioners' site including massage, physiotherapy, naturopathy and child birth education. Everyone there will have a real focus on pre and post-natal care and women's health, ” explained Pace, whose eventual goal is to open a birthing centre in Cochrane and to continue to expand services to Cochrane and surrounding rural communities, including Morley.
Holly Meriam has spent six years as a client at the Cochrane centre. A busy mom of two daughters, five-year-old Harper and two-year-old Jorja, Meriam is now pregnant with her third child (due in February) and feels the care she has received both pre and post-partum at the centre has been “phenomenal. ”
“I love the personal relationship between me and my midwives, ” said Meriam, relaying one instance during her first pregnancy when she hadn't felt her baby kick for the better part of a day and called Pace to share her anxieties.
“Within 10 minutes Shianna was at my house performing a check-up … mother's instinct means everything to them and their care is 24/7 ”
According to Pace, the best way to improve the chances of receiving midwifery is to get on the waitlist as soon as pregnancy is discovered; the waitlist is Alberta-wide.
“We have had women contact us before they even tell their husbands, ” Pace said with a laugh, adding that those who wait until their routine first doctor's appointment (around eight to 10 weeks gestation) are actually waiting too long to get on the list.
Matheson said there is a shortage of midwives in Alberta and more work has to be done collaboratively to ensure funding is applied effectively.
“The Alberta Association of Midwives has been meeting with Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, the College of Midwives of Alberta and Mount Royal University to discuss midwifery in Alberta and how we can ensure that we are using the current funding efficiently and possibly look for ways to use those dollars to allow more families to access care. ”
According to Matheson, to achieve the goal of 10 per cent of all province-wide births by 2020, “We would need to fully fund all of Alberta midwives to their capacity and the new registrants from Mount Royal University. ”
Cameron Westhead, Banff-Cochrane NDP MLA, has been a practicing registered nurse for 12 years.
He is pleased about the funding increase and is looking down the road to “making use of allied healthcare providers like midwives, who can provide quality care while lowering costs ” in an effort to “bend the cost curve downwards on healthcare expenses ”.
Lucy Lovelock, a post-partum doula living and working in Cochrane, said she is encouraged by the funding increase but still feels there is a lot of work to do.
“In the UK, midwives deliver the vast majority of babies and babies are only delivered by a doctor (obstetrical gynecologist) when high-risk or specialist care is required ... one day I hope to see this in Canada, as I believe it would not only save our health care system so much money but would lead to more natural births and less interventions. ”
Doulas are not currently funded by Alberta Health and are hired privately as support and education providers for families both pre and post-natal; their support is very aligned with midwifery care.
Alberta Health has covered midwifery care since 2009.
Midwives have the same scope as doctors, with respect to maternity care, including ordering ultrasounds and work with physicians and hospitals for women who birth at the hospital (Foothills) and at the Arbour Birth Centre (located close to Foothills and is Canada's premier freestanding birthing centre).
In 2005, there were 500 midwives across the country; today there are more than 1,300.
According to Statistics Canada's 2013-14 report, 4.1 per cent of Alberta births were through midwifery care, similar to Manitoba (4.1 per cent) and the NWT (4.4 per cent).
British Columbia led the pack (19 per cent), with Nunavut at 14.8 and Ontario at 13.5.
Nova Scotia, at 2.9 per cent, is the only eastern province that had midwifery-assisted births.
The national average at that time was nine per cent.
Midwifery care is designed for women with low risk pregnancies who desire a low intervention birth. Further resources to help women decide whether midwifery care is right for them are available at cochranemidwives.ca.
