The Hunter River Times

BY JEM ANSHAW

Paige Sawkins may see herself as ‘just a normal mum’, but she has become the face of the Muswellbrook Maternity battle that we have all been waiting for.

Having recently started the Valley Village Collective podcast about all thing’s pregnancy and baby in the Hunter, Paige and co-host Carly met Chloe who delivered her fourth baby in the toilets at Muswellbrook Emergency Department.

“Hearing Chloe’s story got me thinking something needs to be done, when she spoke to her doctor in Singleton about it, she said it is happening all the time, people birthing on the side of the road and in carparks because they are not making it to hospital,” Paige shared.

A petition was created online advocating for change to the current situation at Muswellbrook Hospital where the maternity unit can only operate as an outpatient service, during business hours, due to there not being an obstetrician at the hospital.

“We’re going to go to the table with a solution, if we can’t have an obstetrician then make it a midwife led unit,” Paige shared when discussing what the next step is with the petition already surpassing its first target of 1000 signatures in under two weeks.

“It is something more than what we are getting now, women can get continuity of care throughout their pregnancy and if low risk would be able to birth locally. And if someone’s about to birth and they are not going to make it to Maitland if they are supposed to go there, they don’t have to birth in a toilet.”

This sentiment is echoed by local Nurses and Midwives Association representatives Peggy Smith and Kayla Collins who are both local nurses, with the Kayla having recently started post graduate midwifery studies.

“There are so many situations that might not allow for women to be able to travel, and issues don’t just happen in business hours, Monday to Friday, when there is going to be a midwife here and able to attend to situations that might arise,” Kayla said when discussing the current satiation which is putting babies and their mothers at risk.

While Scone and Singleton do currently have midwives on site 24/7 to assist in performing checks if mothers have concerns about their babies, the travel is often an issue and there are worries putting off a drive could have detrimental effects on the pregnancy.

Not being able to deliver babies in Muswellbrook adds another level of stress to the pregnancy due to the time needed to travel to the nearest hospital when in spontaneous labour, and for indigenous families limits their ability to welcome new family members on their ancestral land.

NSW Health have told the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association they are continuing to advertise the vacant positions at Muswellbrook with an intention to bring back full maternity services, but Peggy shared they are not seeing much urgency in their actions.

“To date we’ve seen them advertise once for a GP obstetrician, and even when they did advertise that they said in Singleton, when we pulled them up on that, they said it’s a blanket position that covers Singleton, Scone and it covers Muswellbrook,” she told The Hunter River Times.

The online petition is still open and can be found by searching ‘Reopen Muswellbrook Maternity’ on change.org, and the community is encouraged to get behind this push for action.