Fears over birth venue

Shari Hepburn, with son Zeon Watts, has an anxious wait to see where she will deliver her baby.

Crystal Spencer

EXPECTANT mum Shari Hepburn knows she is not the only one being told to go to The Tweed Hospital rather than Murwillumbah when labour pains start in the next few weeks – but she has decided to speak out in the hope health bosses and politicians hear.

Ms Hepburn says she cannot understand the need to downgrade Murwillumbah hospital’s birthing unit.

She says the decision, announced by the North Coast Area Health Service last year, has left many Murwillumbah district mothers like her fearing what will happen at the birth of her baby.

She has been left alarmed at the possibility of being turned away from The Tweed Hospital if it is at full capacity and having to travel in labour to the Gold Coast Hospital or Logan Hospital, or turn around and head south to Lismore. Ms Hepburn said her first baby, delivered two years ago, required an emergency caesarean – making this pregnancy “high risk”.

With the downgrade of Murwillumbah maternity services, she will consequently be required to travel to The Tweed Hospital.

“This now leaves me with the fear of travelling further while in labour and the situation where Tweed is at full capacity or on bypass,” Ms Hepburn said.

“The birth of a baby should be full of excitement and anticipation, not fear and uncertainty of where a birth will take place.”

Ms Hepburn said she understood the birth of a baby could take “unexpected turns” but felt a mum-to-be should be able to go to “a place where you feel comfortable, unrushed and seen as a person – not a number on a birthing process line”.

“I know I’m not the only expecting mother who is being made to go to an often over-crowded Tweed Hospital, who keeps her fingers crossed that there will be a bed to deliver their baby in,” she said.

Like many mums she says she is hoping she will not be “made to go to the Gold Coast Hospital or further”.

Ms Hepburn’s father, Neil Hepburn, said he had written to both the NSW Health Minister Carmel Tebbutt, whose office was still considering a response, and Federal Labor MP for Richmond Justine Elliot, whose office asked him to confirm if he wanted representations made on the matter.

State National Party MP for Lismore, Thomas George, whose electorate includes Murwillumbah, has asked the town’s residents concerned about health services to have their say at a community consultation session organised by the NSW Opposition in the Murwillumbah Services Club on Tuesday from 3pm.