More local babies born in off island hospitals
Last week’s You Asked question fortunately led me to uncover further details regarding the number of babies born to parents who live on the Gulf Islands.
G.S. from Salt Spring Island asked:
“How many babies of Gulf Islands parents were born at home on the island in 2009; at Lady Minto Hospital; or at other hospitals (Vic General, Cowichan)?”
Thanks to a tip from a Driftwood reader who saw this column last week, I was able to access data kept by the local Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) health units that tracks births to ensure health nurse follow-up visits with new mothers. VIHA communications staff had directed me to Vital Stats, whose data was not as useful as that kept by VIHA’s own health units.
B.C. Vital Stats tracks births according to birth location; we wanted births according to the mother’s place of residence.
Here is VIHA’s 2009 breakdown based on just that:
Births are tallied differently according to health unit, but what can be surmised (with even more assurance this week) is that most southern Gulf Islands mothers indeed choose to have their babies at off-island hospitals.
And contrary to popular belief, in-hospital births are favoured over home births.
On Salt Spring in 2009, 76 per cent of births were in-hospital and 24 per cent at home. On all the other southern Gulf Islands combined, 93 per cent were in-hospital versus 7 per cent at home. Local health nurses explain that the attraction to off-island hospitals could be that a physician, say in Victoria or Vancouver, can deliver babies, rather than a midwife.
“You can safely assume any baby born at home or at Lady Minto Hospital is by a midwife,” says Trinda Gajek, a Salt Spring-based child, youth and family public health nurse.
No physicians on Salt Spring Island currently have the obstetrical insurance that permits them to deliver babies and so any mother who wants a doctor to deliver her child — or wants to give birth in a facility that can deal with emergency or potentially life-threatening situations — must go to an off-island hospital.
For mothers on Mayne, Pender, Galiano and Saturna, travelling to Lady Minto Hospital is not an option due to infrequent (or non-existent) ferry trips to Salt Spring, Gajek says.
P.S. Regular readers of this column might notice a slight discrepancy in the number of Lady Minto Hospital births given last week and this week. Vital Stats reported 12 babies born at LMH, while the health unit had recorded 10. Gajek speculated this could be because two births began at LMH but were completed off island.
In regards to your published column on Island births (Driftwood Jan 27 2010) –
Your article stated that “In-hospital births were favoured over home births” and went on to quote local health nurses explanation for this to be that mothers wanted a physician rather than a midwife to deliver their babies.
In support of midwife attended island births, I would like to gently point out that the figures you present only show the _number_ of births in the various locations. They DO NOT show women’s preference for birth location, or birth attendant, nor do they indicate where the births began!!
Medical circumstances (near the last minute) precluded our 2009 preference for an at-home, midwife-attended island birth. While I fully applaud and appreciate the wonderful care received at Vic General and the well-judged “transfer orders” from our midwife, I would not want our birth “statistic” to be part of an erroneous conclusion that we chose a physician led hospital birth over a midwife-assisted one!!!
Thank you!
: )
Thank you for pointing out how there was a misunderstanding here. Saying that “…contrary to popular belief, in-hospital births are favoured…” was an erroneous assumption of preference on my part. As the health nurse interviewed later clarified, Salt Spring women who end up giving birth in off-island hospitals do not “choose” a physician over a midwife — women often end up at off-island hospitals due to delivery complications.