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Birthing new ideas?

Council committee set to debate whether to permit midwife birthing centres in residential areas
0801 birthing centre file
The St. Albert Community Midwives are looking to create the first birthing centre in Alberta outside of Calgary and Edmonton. L-R: Janelle McLeod, Jennifer Thomson, Anna Gimpel, Taryn Campbell and Lynne Hill.

The St. Albert Community Midwives have a dream: opening a birthing centre in the city, where families can come for check-ups in comfort and have an alternative option to delivering in hospital.

A major hurdle in their path, however, is St. Albert’s land use bylaw. Currently it prohibits the midwives from opening a birthing centre in a residential area, as they hope to do.

But after presenting their case to city council in September, the midwives recently got a piece of good news. Mayor Cathy Heron intends to make a motion allowing for the birthing centre, which will be debated at city council’s community growth and infrastructure committee on Jan. 13.

“It looks promising and we're really hoping that it will work out and we will stay in St. Albert, because many of our clients, they want us to stay,” said Anna Gimpel, one of the St. Albert Community Midwives founders.

If the midwives are unable to open a birthing centre in St. Albert, Gimpel said they may have to pack up and find a different community to locate in.

Heron said in an interview she actually wanted to be a midwife when she was younger, and every option should be available to women when they are considering how to deliver their child.

She added she can understand the midwives’ perspective around location.

“I kind of get the point of view from the midwives that they’d like it to be more of a residential feeling, not in an industrial commercial area,” she said.

St. Albert communications adviser Juliann Cashen said in an email the city’s land use bylaw accommodates birthing centres under a “health service” definition. However, health service use is neither permitted nor discretionary within residential districts.

The midwives' current location within a commercial area is no longer sustainable, Gimpel said, following successive rent hikes. Babies are not delivered at their current location, so the only option available to clients who are unable to have home births is to go to hospital.

Demand on the midwives is increasing as well, and their staff has expanded from three midwives in 2015 to five starting in April. On average, they assist 120 clients per year and expect to see 200 this year.

Gimpel said the midwives have already thought about any possible opposition to them locating within a residential neighbourhood. In order to mitigate any concerns prospective neighbours might have, they would choose a home on a corner lot and far away from other homes.

In addition, she said it would be a “really quiet clinic” and the number of people visiting the centre will be fairly low.

Currently there are five birth centres across the province, and Gimpel said they are all located within residential areas.

Gimpel said two thirds of the midwives’ clients who had births at the Sturgeon Community Hospital would have preferred to give birth at a birthing centre.

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