Joyce Fegan: Pregnant women — what's their lobby group?

'We've been allowing, or denying, women support based on centimetres these last 14 months'

Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns and Uplift's Siobhan O'Donoghue, along with a group of new mothers at the Coombe last December to protest the maternity ban on partners. File picture: Paul Sharp

The pubs have the Vintners' Federation lobbying for them. The restaurants had the Restaurants Association of Ireland batting for them. Footballers and rugby players have the likes of the GAA and the IRFU in their corner.

The pubs got to open last December - remember that, and that fallout?

Some GAA players trained together before dawn, even before the restrictions allowed.

Pregnant women - who's their lobby group?

This week, women had to protest, protest to have their voices heard about the effect of the ongoing and barbaric restrictions in place at maternity hospitals across the country.

And women being women - carried out the protest online, because we are diligent and dutiful like that.

What kind of country, or political system are we living in at all when people have to protest about giving birth with some semblance of support?

This is the Ireland we are living in, according to the latest headlines:

"Night clubs, holidays next to return".

"Time to start 'planning our summer' says Holohan".

"Now is the time to see one another again".

"HSE does not know what maternity restrictions are in place at individual hospitals".

I remember after giving birth last year, and as I would push baby in her pram along the empty streets of my neighbourhood, I'd look at other women in a similar position and wonder.

I'd wonder how their labour had been.

I'd wonder how they could, or we could, just nonchalantly let them stroll along, not acknowledging what they had just done.

I'd wonder why we weren't queuing up to talk to them, the way we fall over ourselves for the autograph of a famous rugby player or whoever it is you hero worship.

I couldn't believe how little pass we put on childbirth, it was like we were asleep to this heroic feat that exists right in front of our eyes and around, every single day.

I've seen people put more pass on a rising sun or the waves from a northeasterly on the Irish Sea.

Then as the year progressed and 2020 turned into 2021, this almost apathy turned into something else entirely. This apathy, disregard maybe, towards pregnancy and childbirth manifested in an ad hoc situation nationwide where some people could have their partner with them while they laboured, where some women couldn't have their partner with them after delivery and where some people chose to labour in car parks.

As if in some clandestine mission, couples would chat in enclaves of corridors, stairwells, lifts, lobbies, steps up to lobbies and in car parks.

One man tells how he would crane his neck up, from the street below, to see his wife at a window as she laboured alone through the contractions.

A woman tells how she laboured alone for three days, until her cervix had dilated enough centimetres to allow her birth partner to come in.

We've been allowing, or withholding, women support based on centimetres these last 14 months.

And they've been watching on as the pubs reopened, as groups of friends could dine and party together, maybe some of those people were even medical professionals out enjoying themselves after months of arduous working conditions, but these women still were not permitted a hand to hold as a contraction brought them to their knees in the middle of the night.

Couples would share homes, beds, cars, the air they breathed, but they have to be separated at the hospital door if the centimetres weren't right.

And the women spoke out and spoke out. Some were on the radio. Some were in newspapers. The stories were not nice. But the restrictions continued, as others gave out about the lack of foreign travel and complained about pubs still being shut.

We've left pregnant people in a ha'penny place. And they're still there.

Wall of male voices

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly: 'What I want to see, what we all want to see, is as open access as possible within the confines of what the local hospitals believe is safe.'

When you go off looking to power to see where we're at this week, you meet a wall of male voices.

This is what Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said: “I have heard and I do understand that there may be different policies being operated in different maternity hospitals. But I agree that a standard approach would be better. So I will take it up with the Department of Health and with NPHET in the next couple of days.”

The next couple of days?

This is what HSE CEO Paul Reid said: "The conditions are right that restrictions should be lifted". He said he'd write to all maternity units. When?

This is what Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said: “What I will do of course is, support the local infection prevention and control decisions that are made by the hospitals but what I want to see, what we all want to see, is as open access as possible within the confines of what the local hospitals believe is is safe."

There are so many qualifications within the confines of that sentence.

I wonder how many more people will have given birth without the support of a loved one by the time Varadkar, Reid and Donnelly have written letters and what not.

The businesses got their hearing, the Vintners, the Restaurants Association, the GAA. But that's the power of a powerful lobby group.

Who are pregnant women's lobby group?

There is of course the National Women's Council of Ireland and AIMS (Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services Ireland), a voluntary organisation around since 2007.

We talk about partners missing out on milestone moments or couples missing out on sharing the milestone moment, but that's a sentimental framing of the issue.

At hand is the fact that women have had to carry babies in the shadow of a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, wondering, when the moment comes, will they have to give birth alone. At hand is the fact that when a woman walks through that door of a maternity hospital she has no idea how the next 24 or 48 hours will play out, who she'll meet, what form her labour will take, what her body will do.

She knows the plethora of possibilities ahead of her - a vacuum, a forceps at her perineum, an epidural, but will it take, an episiotomy or even a Caesarean section. And these are all before her cervix has effaced and contracted, a physiological function that can bring you to your hands and knees.

A hand to hold surely isn't too much to ask for, or do we still not respect women enough to give them that much, and with swift urgency?