New birth centre’s first delivery a boy

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This article was published 12/12/2011 (5431 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first baby born at a new stand-alone birth centre in Winnipeg has black eyes and a head full of dark curls.

Midwife Fleur McEvoy “caught” Jack Stephen Chilufya at 7:03 p.m. Saturday and the baby’s birth will go down in the Winnipeg Birth Centre books as a successful first.

He’s 201/4 inches long and weighed eight pounds, one ounce.

The new parents, both 27, are delighted. This is their first child.

“I cut the cord. I liked that I did that. It was a good experience,” new dad Anthony Chilufya said from the couple’s home.

“I wanted a home-like, relaxing birth,” said mom Sara Heinrichs, explaining she was anxious about a hospital birth — “the hustle and bustle” was just one reason, she said.

The $3.5-million Birth Centre is at the intersection between St. Mary’s Road and St. Anne’s Road, the building that once housed CKND television, which is now Global News.

The centre celebrated its grand opening in mid-October, but the first birth was this week, two weeks after it opened for births. Administration and prenatal classes started after the grand opening, but births had to wait until this month.

Heinrichs was the first to use the brand-new facility and she and her husband said they enjoyed it.

“I was in the tub the majority of the time, which is something you can’t do in a hospital. I didn’t deliver in the bathtub, but I could have. When I was ready, I moved to the bed and had the delivery,” Heinrichs said.

She was the only mother in labour. “I had the whole place to myself.”

Best of all, the parents were allowed to take their baby home without having to spend the night.

“After being in the same room for 12 hours, I just needed to get out of there and be in my own bed with my baby,” Heinrichs said.

Aside from personal preferences, the other difference from a hospital is structural.

Rooms are bigger, and because the centre is custom-built, there are a lot of extras: a shower, the tub, and bars along the walls to grasp.

Heinrichs said her two sisters, her aunt and her partner were with her during the labour. Her seven-month-old nephew was also allowed an appearance.

There were three midwives, counting one who came in at the beginning of her 81/2-hour labour.

Two midwives attended the birth, but it was her primary midwife who delivered the baby.

“I didn’t have a doctor, I had midwives,” Heinrichs said.

There are also birth centres in Quebec and Alberta.

The one here is the culmination of more than two decades of work by the Women’s Health Clinic — the city’s self-proclaimed feminist community health clinic — and five years of pushing by Health Minister Theresa Oswald.

The facility has four birthing rooms, each complete with a large bathtub for immersion births and a bed set lower to the floor than in a hospital, rooms for interviews with midwives and for prenatal and postpartum support, examination rooms, a lounge and offices for staff.

It also has a room with wide ledges where women can walk around and lean over to help relieve pain before birth.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

Midwives busy

Some five to eight per cent of births in Winnipeg occur with the help of midwives and 20 to 25 per cent of those births occur at home.

Manitoba has the highest proportion of births with a midwife in the country at 6.5 per cent; the national average is 4.3 per cent. About 10,000 babies are born in Winnipeg every year. The Winnipeg Birth Centre can accommodate 500 deliveries a year.

Eight midwives have permanent offices at the birth centre and every midwife has privileges there. The province now funds 40 midwife positions, including 28 in Winnipeg.

 

-- Source: Winnipeg regional Health Authority