Quebec order certifies three Nunavik midwives

Salluit midwife Maggie Tayara listens to three-day-old Hannah-Skai’s heartbeat during a home visit with the baby’s parents in 2014. Nunavik’s Hudson coast has three newly-certified midwives: Saira Kakayuk and Lizzie Sakiagak Tayara of Salluit, and Mary Ittukallak of Puvirnituq. (FILE PHOTO)

(Updated, Oct. 15, 9:45 a.m.)

Nunavik’s midwifery program got a major boost this fall with the certification of three new Nunavimmiut midwives, the regional board of health and social services announced last week.

Although Saira Kakayuk and Lizzie Sakiagak Tayara of Salluit, and Mary Ittukallak of Puvrnituq, have practiced as midwives in the region for years, all three women received their certification from Quebec’s professional midwifery order, Quebec’s Ordre des sages-femmes du Québec, Sept. 23.

That makes all three midwives certified to practice throughout Quebec, and brings the total number of certified Nunavimmiut midwives to nine.

Given Nunavik’s high birth rate, the addition of more certified Inuit midwives is a boon to maternal care in the region and to the general well-being of Nunavik families, said Minnie Grey, executive director of the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services.

“It is important for women and their families to be able to give birth at home, to be surrounded by their loved ones,” Grey said in an Oct. 7 release, “and more importantly, to be able to receive services in their mother tongue, especially in moments of great pain and stress.”

All three midwives started their training between 2004 and 2006 and have attended at 200 births along Nunavik’s Hudson coast, where the region’s midwifery program was first established in 1987.

“Accompanying a patient is a very nice moment, to be able to soothe their pain,” Ittukallak said about the births which she has overseen in her career.

There are four birthing centres in Nunavik, three of them based on the Hudson coast, located in Inukjuak, Puvirnituq and Salluit.

According to Quebec’s order of midwives, 85 per cent of pregnant women who live on Nunavik’s Hudson coast can now give birth in or near their home communities.

The region’s fourth and newest birthing centre, which opened in 2009, is located on the Ungava coast in Kuujjuaq.

The Ungava program has grown to count a handful of midwives, including the Ungava’s first Inuk midwife-in-training.

The Inuulitsivik midwifery program started in 1986 in response to the demand from Nunavik’s Hudson Coast communities to stop the routine transfer of women south to give birth.

While a midwife’s practice in Nunavik is focused on low-risk pregnancies, birth and postpartum care, their roles often expand beyond that scope.