Hospital still has a ban on fathers in delivery room

A MAJOR hospital is still continuing to ban the fathers of babies from the delivery room because of the coronavirus – even though other hospitals are no longer doing the same.

The restriction on partners being at the birth was introduced in some hospitals to protect patients from the virus but it has since been relaxed in all other maternity units – except the Midland Regional Hospital Mullingar.

Partners are only allowed into the delivery room 30 minutes before the birth, leaving mothers alone in labour for hours.

Krysia Lynch, chairwoman of the Association for Improvement in Maternity Services (AIMS), said the restrictive measure in Mullingar Hospital is paternalistic and leaves women without support when it is needed.

‘Technically they are allowed in for the final moments but what use is a partner at that point?’ she said. ‘What use is that to the partner, even? Does a partner want to walk in where they are just about to see their partner pushing out a baby?

‘The whole point of having a partner with you is not so they can observe you... but so that they support you and give you that psychological and emotional support in what is a very testing time,’ she said. ‘To have somebody

‘The whole point is so they support you’

just dragged up from the car park with ten minutes to go, who is that serving? It’s certainly not serving the birthing person.’

The coronavirus pandemic has had a strong impact on the way many maternity units are operating.

HSE guidelines around birth and labour during the Covid-19 health crisis say that every effort will be made to ensure your partner is present at the birth but in some situations, it may not be possible.

They say that ‘any restrictions are to keep everyone safe’. However, the restrictions are making expectant mothers reconsider their birthing plan and some have considered a home birth instead, it has been claimed.

A home-births midwife who operates in the Midlands received a huge increase in interest in her services recently. She said she received 42 calls in the one day, enquiring about her services, whereas she would usually get one call a week. Meanwhile, Ms Lynch claims the ban on partners in the delivery room in Mullingar is not evidence-based.

‘From our perspective, we would be very much in favour of procedures that are evidencebased,’ she said. ‘If the evidence were there to show that a partner’s presence – just for the last minutes of labour – infinitely increases the safety for mother, baby and staff, then we would appreciate that.

‘But we know that’s not the case and, furthermore, the hospital has never done a risk assessment to prove that is the case.

‘Everybody is willing to take a hit of some kind in order to improve the safety for all those around them. You would want to be shown that the measures that you’re going to implement really are having an effect.

‘I think one of the issues is that some of these measures are not being thought up by people who genuinely are looking at it from a woman’s perspective. It’s just been thought up as a procedural tick-the-box. It hasn’t really been thought through. I just would have thought at this time Mullingar [Hospital] would have said, “Okay, we did that measure and actually it probably was a bit too austere and we’ll lie back on it”, but they don’t want to. They want to maintain it.’

The Ireland East Hospitals Group said restrictions are currently being reviewed.