Mother speaks out after traumatic roadside birth
‘‘I thought I was going to bleed to death.’’
Almost six months later, that’s the most vivid memory Amanda McIvor has of the day her son Levi was born in an ambulance on the side of the road near Lumsden.
It was the roadside birth that was predicted by MP’s, midwives and members of the northern Southland community who were opposed to the downgrade of the town’s primary birthing unit to a maternal and child hub.
After the downgrade, McIvor had planned to go to Invercargill Hospital to give birth, but baby Levi had other ideas.
The hub was meant to be equipped for emergency births – but McIvor’s midwife found some essential equipment was missing, and called an ambulance instead.
Levi’s birth was one of four rapid births that prompted two independent reviews from the Southern District Health Board – one into the births, and one into the setup of maternal and child hubs at Te Anau, Lumsden and Wanaka.
The reports make for damning reading and show the board had no clear definition of what a maternal and child hub would be, or the services they would provide.
After reading them, McIvor doesn’t feel assured that women in rural Southland are receiving adequate care.
‘‘The report just confirmed everything the community has been telling them,’’ she said.
The reports have made 10 recommendations to the board to ensure the community is receiving adequate maternity care,
including more strategic oversight and monitoring of delivery, clearer lines of accountability and reporting and more engagement between the board and key stakeholders, so that the community would understand the board’s strategy better.
But McIvor wants to see a review into the process that led to the decision to downgrade the maternity centre, rather than a report on the consequences.
She doesn’t believe the board’s plan took the needs or size of
Southland’s rural community into account.
‘‘Expecting families to travel to Invercargill puts extra strain on an already stressful situation.
‘‘In rural Southland, many fathers need to return to farms to continue work and it’s not practical for them to travel to Invercargill every day. As a result, many new mums end up discharging themselves earlier than they should,’’ she said.
Clutha-Southland MP Hamish Walker, who has campaigned for a reinstatement of full services to Lumsden, said the reviews highlighted no one fully understood what a maternity hub was or what it would encompass.
The release of emails from the Health Ministry, which refer to the Lumsden hub as a ‘‘resource centre’’ before being retracted by a manager the next day, show there was confusion about the role of a hub before it was implemented.
The emails were released under the Official Information Act.
‘‘Lumsden needs to have full services reinstated for the safety of rural mothers and babies rather than using it as a testing ground while the Health Minister and DHB work out what a hub is,’’ Walker said.
Lumsden needs to have full services reinstated for the safety of rural mothers and babies.’’ Hamish Walker
Clutha-Southland MP