Posted by Laurie | March 26th, 2009

Just read on Twitter about this Canadian Maternity Experiences survey and then went on over to both PhDinParenting’s blog and Ann Douglas’ blog. And of course I have to participate!

First, let me just note that I’m from Alberta – a province where we have not had midwifery funding (I think supposed to soon or maybe just recently even – but not for any of my 3 births). Now to respond to the questions posed at PhD in Parenting’s blog.

• How much choice did you have when it came to finding a prenatal care provider? Lots of choice? Or was the choice made for you?

I had plenty of choice. I live near Edmonton, which is of course a large urban centre. I chose a family practitioner who delivered babies for my first birth, but an obstetrician for my next two births (after a bad experience with the family practitioner’s office during a miscarriage between my oldest and middle child). I could have chosen an obstetrician or a midwife also, although would have had to pay personally for midwife services.

• Where did you go for information when you were pregnant?

Well I did get some information from my doctor, but I definitely got a lot of my information from books and internet forums. I like to have time to absorb a lot of material and make my own choices, so having the doctor simply tell me what to do wasn’t my style.

• Did you know about the importance of taking folic acid prior to conceiving? Had you heard about the new research about the role folic acid can play in preventing preterm birth (if you take it one year before becoming pregnant)?

Family doctor was great for this. She started tell me long before I was married or considering children about the importance of folic acid.

• Did you feel you had adequate choice in terms of a place to give birth? Did you wish you had more options?

Not really, as I definitely would have liked the option of using a midwife (funded). I also ended up with a breech baby for first pg and felt very rushed into having a c-section based on hospital regulations. And here where I live you can’t choose hospital really – you choose a practitioner and then generally birth in the hospital where they have privileges. You can use another hospital but you give up having your regular doctor. And there are a very few midwives who you pay for and who are very busy so not always taking new patients.

I would have loved to have a birth centre option also, but again, we don’t have any near Edmonton. I delivered my first two sons at a very busy hospital and while I received adequate care it didn’t feel like the right place to have a baby. My third birth was at a lower level hospital and it was so much better. More relaxed and no moving from the delivery room to the postpartum room!

On a positive note, while my first birth was a c-section for breech, I had two successful VBAC’s with my other pregnancies and wonderful healthy children – so I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out overall!

Tags: Alberta, birth, Canada, canadian, Edmonton, maternity, midwife, pregnancy, vbac