Giving Birth In The Yukon

My blog is mainly a crochet blog but believe it or not there is more to life than crocheting.  The doctor’s office phoned today about my next appointment and I thought maybe I would do a post on giving birth up north.  This is my first birth in the Yukon as I moved here in April 2006 when little Hannah was 5 months old and Rhys was 2 almost 3.  I had them in Germany.  I can tell you how much fun it is to give birth when you don’t speak the language very well (German grammar will be a mystery to me for the rest of my life).  Sign language only goes so far.  Obviously, if I am bent over in serious pain and heavily pregnant that it probably means I am in labour but other than that I had problems telling people what was wrong.  English speaking people were always busy it seemed.

Ok so getting back to the Yukon.  The Yukon has one hospital serving 483 450 km2 and a population of 32 355 people (in December 2006).  The hospital is in Whitehorse.  Most of the communities have a nursing station which employs a practice nurse and some other nurses.  A practice nurse has special training to work in these type of conditions.  Faro, used to have a doctor who covered the two communities closest to here (Ross River and Carmacks) as well but after the old one left a replacement hasn’t been found.  There is a volunteer ambulance service which will pick up the person with the medical emergency and take them to the nursing station (or health center as the one here is technically called as there are only 2 nurses full time).  The nurse is the one with the authority to call the medi-vac  people to come and get the person and fly them to the hospital in Whitehorse.  The ambulance takes the person to the airport.

Women who are 35 weeks and up deliver in the hospital here.  If the baby comes earlier than that you need to be flown to a bigger hospital down south.  Women outside of Whitehorse are asked (told more like it) to come into Whitehorse 2 weeks before the due date to wait in a hotel or wherever until you deliver.  First Nations benefits cover the expense if you are First Nation but if you are like me then you are supposed to come up with the money yourself.  Not only do you have to stay in a hotel room but you get two or more weeks of trying to entertain your other children while heavily pregnant in a hotel room.  I sense some good times ahead.  There is a room in the women’s shelter for a woman on her own to stay in if need be.  I am not leaving my kids for a couple of weeks of course so a hotel room it is.

I asked how long I have to stay in the hospital.  Apparently, if everything goes well then only a couple of days if my mother is there to help (normally it would be a husband but in a case like mine she said she needs my mother to be there).  This is to be a second VBAC.  Like I want another c-section!   One was one too many in my opinion.

So that is how it goes apparently.  Seems to be a bit more work than it needs to be but that is the way they do it around here.   As time goes on in the next 13 weeks or so I will keep you posted on how things are going.