NS needs birth centres and it’s appalling to me that we don’t have any options besides home birth and hospital birth.

A (long) thread on optimal care:

One day you’re being told you need urgent care, made to feel like if you don’t get in that minute, you and your baby are at risk.

and the next you find out it’s a consult because if there’s too many people that day having babies they’ll just have to schedule an alternate time?

Why does the urgency of my care depend on the status of the healthcare system? Why is it when it’s up to me, I have to be on alert and panicking or I’m not doing it right but when it’s you, I’m supposed to be unconditionally flexible?

Why is it not realistic that a birth-giver might want the official hard & fast plan given to them by their physician to be just that & not a suggestion that gets changed 40x by 4 different departments w/o so much as a phone call to let them know?

And now my point: I am a late-20’s white woman with an available birth partner & flexible grandparent ready to take over when I need him to. I’m not working or in class, I’m able to work around the hoops as they’re thrown at me while I plan to have a baby in a hurricane. Maybe.

But If these are my experiences, how are we treating our marginalized communities during birth? How are we supporting their experiences?

Can a medicalized environment (with limited capacity) truly provide optimal care for them in (almost) any circumstance?

I would argue, no.

This is my last baby, I have ‘no stakes in the game’ but the reality is that I think we need to do better for future births.

Everyone deserves a positive birth experience. It aligns with parental mental health, where care is often preached but rarely practised.

That’s not okay.

I won’t get into stats in this thread, it’s already a long one but I implore you to research birth outcomes for different populations & stats on parental (often labelled ‘maternal’) mental health.

(& Also I’ll refrain from criticizing the gender-centred language plaguing NS).