Baffin board will study home birthing in the region

MICHAELA RODRIGUE
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Pregnant women in the Baffin region may not have to leave home to have their babies, depending upon the results of a study.

The study, approved this week by the Baffin health board, will try to determine which mothers can safely deliver their babies within their communities.

The study will also determine which communities are prepared to help expectant mothers deliver at home.

“We’d like to make the risk as low as possible and give the mum the option to have her baby where she wants,” said Dr. Chuck MacNeil, director of medical affairs for the Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board.

MacNeil plans to conduct the study during the next year and report back to the board before it is dissolved on April 1, 2000. The findings of the study may result in a recommendation to allow women to give birth in their home communities, or even in their homes.

Currently women from the Baffin region’s 12 communities outside Iqaluit must be sent to the Baffin Regional Hospital to deliver their babies.

Women are sent to Iqaluit three to four weeks before their estimated due date, said the board’s chief executive officer Jarvis Hoult.

The long period away from home is often hard on families, and Hoult said the board is interested in finding ways to allow births in the communities.

MacNeil plans to survey each woman who gives birth in the Baffin region during the next several months.

The study will try to identify how many of the births would have had complications had they not been at the hospital. It will also determine when it is safe to allow for a birth outside of the hospital.

Doctors and community health nurses currently conduct tests to determine if a pregnancy is at a high or low risk for complications.

But MacNeil said, to date, no followup studies have been conducted to determine if women were happy with their stay in the hospital or would prefer to be within their community.

If the board allows births outside of a hospital, community members, such as elders, will have to be prepared to help out, MacNeil said.

“We do need community support of our staff. There’s not enough money for midwives,” MacNeil said, adding traditional Inuit midwives could aid the delivery process.

That need for community support could mean that women every community may not have the option to remain at home, he said.

“If one community says they don’t want to participate in the community birthing program, I don’t think the board will say they must.”

Nor will the board force registered nurses — who currently aren’t licensed to deliver babies — to do so, Hoult said. Midwives and nurse practitioners are licensed to deliver babies. Extra training may be needed if that responsibility is passed onto other professionals.

“We can’t ask nurses to perform duties their not qualified for or don’t feel ethically they should be doing,” Hoult said.

Hoult stressed the board would only consider changing its child birth policy if it was satisfied risk to mother and child is minimal.

“The focus of this study is to assess the risk of birthing in the community. If the risk is unacceptable or we can’t make changes to reduce the risk, then we wouldn’t change our policy,” Hoult said.