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Giving birth in Letterkenny, Eire

I am presently in Letterkenny, Donegal in the north of Ireland. It is a beautiful part of the country and an area I have wanted to visit for quite some time.

The group I am working with are all from the local hospital, which has about 1700 births each year. As we introduced ourselves, it was clear that these women had wide experience of many hospitals and almost all had trained elsewhere (often in the UK) and often worked abroad too, before returning to this area to settle.

They offer a midwifery model of care here for those women not under the care of private obstetricians, which is very different from much of Ireland. Last year I had met some midwives from Letterkenny in a workshop I presented in Dublin and it was clear then that their approach here was (thankfully) out of step with the more rigid approaches in most other Irish maternity units.

I am told that they have a midwife shortage and this is hampering their plans for expanding their midwifery care. A new section of single labour and birth rooms has been built but cannot be opened because of these staff shortages and its location away from the current unit. This is a great shame because right now in this is the only hospital women are labouring in shared four bedded rooms before being moved to the second stage room. The lack of privacy in the shared first stage area means restrictions on the number of support people who can be with the labouring woman and everyone knows this is far from ideal.

However, despite their less than ideal physical set up, they have achieved low caesarean rates and low intervention rates generally. It reminds me of “the olden days” when shared facilities were very common and midwives felt that women spurred each other on as they laboured together. It will be interesting to see what these midwives offer in response to the group work exercise they did yesterday on ways of making the labour room feel “safe” during labour. If women feel protected and safe then their adrenaline levels will be low and labour will be shorter and more comfortable. I am wondering how they can achieve this when they have to work in these outdated facilities.

I have an inkling of how they achieve this from some comments about drug use in labour but I will wait to see what they offer. I certainly hope they can recruit some more staff - they are offering a great service already and will do even better if their new unit can open.

Posted by andrea at June 29, 2006 05:41 PM