11-07-2022
Healthy
Editorial
SCHIEDAM – Mason was born at eight to four yesterday. He was 47 centimeters tall and weighed 3310 grams. And he is the last baby born in the Franciscus Vlietland. Mother Carla Roeleveld-Morra gave birth to her son yesterday in the last shift in the delivery room in Schiedam.
The new Schiedammer was ‘got’ by father Ralph and Kirsten Dingemans. The midwife of practice Aleida is celebrating her 25th anniversary as a midwife today. Today the removal van drove to the hospital to drive the equipment from the delivery rooms (think of a CTG) to the Rotterdam Gasthuis.
It turned out to be a ‘celebratory’ delivery, Carla and Ralph say on the phone, “We got a kind of VIP treatment, with a lot of staff and all the food and drink we wanted. The nurses on the ward were happy to be the last to help us with the delivery.” Dingemans reported Carla around half past ten in the morning. “We had been told that we could register until two in the afternoon.” Before eleven, Ralph drove Carla to the hospital in ten minutes; five hours later, Mason was there. As a result, both the day shift in the hospital and the evening shift still had work to do in their last shift in Schiedam. Esmeralda and Miriam were the Franciscus employees who assisted in the final delivery. At eight o’clock they could go home, because the new young family had also gone home.
It was also a special day for Kirsten Dingemans. 25 years after her training, also in the Schiedam hospital, then still Schieland, she gave birth there for the last time. It was emotional, she says. The delivery rooms in the hospital are so beautiful, with a view of the bee. How many children did she bring into the world over the years? She couldn’t say it. “My father once said that I had to write down in a notebook if I had given birth. “Why?” I said then, but now I wish I’d kept track of it. Fifteen hundred, two thousand children in 25 years? But it could also have been three thousand.”
Dingemans estimates that currently eighty percent of births take place in hospital. According to her, that share has always been high in Schiedam. “Maybe it was 60 percent 25 years ago. Very different from rural municipalities, where only a small proportion of children are born in hospital.”
A variety of reasons make women choose to give birth in hospital. In addition to medical, cultural and social factors also play a role. The birth of Roeleveld-Morra is a good example of how things can go. “I actually wanted to give birth in the Sophia birth center in Rotterdam. But I understood that if I wanted an epidural (for pain relief, ed.), I would have to go to another hospital.” Sophia specializes in medically difficult deliveries.
But during the contractions, Dingemans was still worried: what if the pain was too great? In consultation, for example, the corridor to the hospital was made, and that became the Vlietland as Schiedam’s household. In the end, the delivery went so well there that there was no need for an IV with pain relief.
So it remained an obstetric birth, according to Dingemans, and not a medical one. From now on, she can continue to perform these in the Gasthuis. “There are four relocated home birth rooms available.” In which midwives can ‘do’ the birth. Still, Dingemans is concerned; the problem of the extra distance to Rotterdam remains. For parents, especially those who have to take public transport, and for midwives who still want to be able to serve their ‘customers’ as much as possible and therefore do not want to wait for extra travel kilometres. And above all extra stress. “As a midwife you are actually mainly concerned with risk selection: constantly switching between what is feasible and what is not. What is the risk of what you do or don’t do? Can we still make it to the hospital if there is meconium in the amniotic fluid?” In that whole ‘picture’ of possibilities and impossibilities, a traffic jam is the last thing you want, she says. The reality of the people in the hospital is different: they are there, in the delivery rooms, waiting for the pregnant women to come in.
Ralph Roeleveld works in Rotterdam-North and knows the situation on the A20. “Between four and five you are always stuck in Rotterdam.” His wife can put herself in the shoes of Dingemans: “Should I give birth again, I think I will opt for a home birth. You are more confident with a second birth, but the fact that you do not want to end up in traffic jams with your contractions also plays a role.”
For example, the risk selection of Schiedam mothers and midwives will probably turn out differently in the coming period. Dingemans’ work will also be different: at present there is still a clear distinction between a birth performed by/with an obstetrician and a medical birth, in which clinical midwives take over the work, because pain relief is given via an IV or the inducing childbirth. However, these are also actions that she can take into account. As in the past, when the obstetrician also gave birth in the hospital, where the gynaecologist only took his or her part in the delivery in the event of medical problems. “You see a shift, that we are picking up more things again.” Finally, a shortage of employees who can manage the deliveries in the right direction is the main reason for Franciscus Vlietland to close the delivery rooms in Schiedam more quickly, in order to be able to deploy the available personnel more efficiently in Rotterdam.
Well, that’s the near future. Yesterday it was mainly festive, with a bit of melancholy. “We have been working together for so long,” says Dingemans, referring to the close relationship she built up over 25 years with the maternity nurses and midwives of the hospital. “I’m looking forward to that, in Rotterdam. Because the collaboration continues. And we’re going to work with new people, which is nice too.”
Thus, on July 10, 2022, Mason Roeleveld-Morra was the last child to be born in the Schiedam hospital. At least, that’s what all women who will become mothers hope in the near future: a birth in the emergency room would be undesirable, but cannot be ruled out.