"I gave birth on the side of the road."

Australian mothers are being forced to give birth on road-sides and this is why.

Where did you give birth? A private birthing suite, a delivery room in a well-equipped public hospital, or on the side of a dusty outback road?

If you think the last is a ridiculous notion then think again because a crisis in rural maternity options for Australian women is making this more of a reality.

What about your maternity appointments? Were they tough? I remember it being shockingly difficult to find a parking spot for my private obstetrician.

I remember being antsy at being kept waiting for over an hour once while he attended to other patients, and I remember being a little peeved that he missed the birth of my third who came a little too quickly and had to be delivered by a midwife at our hospital of choice.

How lucky I was.

For Chanel McCasker a routine appointment with her obstetrician was a plane trip away. The mother, from the remote Bathurst Island, was a long way from the nearest hospital in the Northern Territory. She was one of the lucky ones who made it to hospital when she went into labor.

According to a News Limited report a shocking 70 per cent of rural and remote birthing units in NSW have closed in the past two decades.

For Doug and Kimberly Lisle the birth of their son, Jack was meant to be a routine affair. But when Kimberley went into labour at their sheep station at Wollun, near Walcha in northern NSW they knew the hour long drive to Armindale Hospital was ahead of them.

Only 10 minutes in and baby Charlie wasn’t waiting. News Limited report that Kimberley told her husband to pull over and call an ambulance.

“They said can you see the baby’s head and I thought shit, I hope not, but yes I could. They talked me through it,” Mr Lisle said.

Charlie James was born right there on the side of the road. Isn’t an unusual story. Becky Cole of Bourke knew she would face a 412 km trip to Dubbo to birth her baby. Bourke Hospital’s birthing unit closed down in 2009.

With her husband away and two weeks till her due date she took her four children to Dubbo and checked into a hotel. Her baby was two weeks late – causing great excitement but a massive hotel bill!

“I’m lucky, I had family and money, hundreds of women don’t have these options,” she told News Limited.

Dr Elaine Dietsch, Professor of Midwifery at Charles Sturt University, interviewed 45 women who had given birth by the side of the road for her report “Lucky we had a torch”.

She said only obstetric risk was taken into account by authorities when closing down rural units. She says we need to rethink our definition of risk for these women.

“We look at the risk from an obstetric risk, can we do an epidural, can we perform a caesarean and if no, the unit is closed and the woman must travel to a larger centre, but the risks involved in traveling, the ­social risks of being a long way away from family and the financial costs are not taken into account,” she told News Limited.

According to her report some women face traveling for many hours and long distances to access basic antenatal care. She writes, “It was not unusual for women to report seven hours of driving for a five-minute obstetrician appointment.”

One participant in her study spoke of the trauma of antenatal appointments “It took me longer than bloody eight hours … I left here, yeah I left here about eight or nine o’clock in the morning, and I got to [the city] at nine thirty that night. And I was knackered. I was buggered. The kids were berko, I was berko, yep.”

Across Australia more than half of our small maternity units have closed over the past decade. A 2010 survey of rural families found only 12 per cent of the respondents felt they had good access to maternity services.

As a city mother it makes you think just how lucky we are – basic care that we take for granted should be available to each and every prospective mother in Australia.

It is simply not good enough that rural mothers have to fear giving birth on the side of the road.

How do you feel about Australian mothers giving birth on the side of the road? What was your birthing experience like?

You can write to the Health Minister, Peter Dutton about this via his website.

When Aussie mum Corrine Cinatl gave birth on the way to hospital, she had her birth photographer in the car, and the results are truly beautiful. CLICK THROUGH the gallery to see. For the full range of images, you can visit Breanna Gravener’s website The Birth Story.

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