Mon Health needs to
restore midwife position
The U.S. is in a maternal mortality crisis, and by firing its sole midwife, Mon Health just made it more dangerous for West Virginia women to give birth.
This feels personal for me, because I have a 7-month-old son, and I feel thankful that he’s here and healthy, and that I am too, because our story could have had a different ending.
The person who’s the hero of our story was my midwife at Mon Health, Gail Rock. She was amazing. During my pregnancy, she was available by text to answer any question at any time. She stayed with us during nearly my whole labor, helping me find positions that would turn my son and ease labor. This sort of support is rare if not unheard-of-from an OB-GYN. And after my son was born, I had a serious hemorrhage, losing half of the blood in my body; Rock set up transfusions before my husband and I were even aware that I had been in danger.
I’ve never had as smart and caring a health provider as her. And we need more midwives like her, because in the United States right now, more and more women are dying from childbirth. At 18 deaths per 100,000 childbirths, we have a far higher rate of maternal mortality than other wealthy countries. In the past 20 years, the rate has more than doubled.
Some of the solutions are clear. One of them, according to numerous studies, is more midwives. And yet, Mon Health, just this past week, fired its only midwife. Because it doesn’t employ midwives anymore, Gail was fired. The problem, from what I’ve heard, isn’t that she didn’t have enough patients, but the reverse. She had a lot of patients, but doctors can bill at higher rates.
Shame on Mon Health. Shame on its CEO, David S. Goldberg. The women of West Virginia deserve good health care. I call on Mon Health to reconsider this misguided and dangerous decision. I call on it to strengthen and expand its midwifery services. Unless Mon Health trusts midwives, I won’t trust Mon Health.
Johanna Winant
Morgantown
Care midwives provide
is far from the norm
I’m writing in response to Mon Health’s outrageous decision to fire Gail Rock. My son was born at Mon Health last fall. Rock was our midwife. She spent hours with my wife while she labored through the night.
She held my wife, counseled her, coached her. She expertly positioned her body to help her through painful contractions. She was firm and encouraging throughout the labor, and her depth of knowledge was extraordinary. Even more impressive, though, was the sheer amount of time she gave my wife. (She also made herself available by phone and text during my wife’s entire pregnancy.)
Unfortunately, that kind of care — the kind that certified nurse-midwives like Rock are trained to provide — is not the norm. I know from experience.
We had a doctor, not a midwife, when our first child was born. We saw the doctor twice. She came in once to urge my wife to get a C-section, since the labor was taking so long. She came in again at the very end of labor — 36 hours later — to help the baby out. That was all the care we got from her. (Fortunately, there were very able nurses on staff.)
It’s not just that nurse midwives like Rock provide a level of care that doctors do not. When they’re integrated into a health care system, there are significantly higher rates of vaginal delivery and significantly lower rates of C-sections, pre-term births, low-birthweight babies and newborn deaths. There are fewer epidurals and less use of anesthesia.
Unfortunately, hospitals don’t necessarily want fewer C-sections or less anesthesia. They profit more from costly births. I don’t know if that’s the reason that Mon Health System fired its sole midwife, since it hasn’t released a statement explaining its decision. Whatever its reasoning, I urge it to reconsider.
Geoff Hilsabeck
Morgantown
