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The HSE has bowed to a campaign to reverse its ban on partners of pregnant women from attending maternity hospitals for 20-week scans and surgeries.
The move was introduced as a Covid-19 precaution in hospitals, but has sparked a huge backlash from couples using maternity services, some of whom have described the ban as inhumane, cruel and heartbreaking.
Hundreds of emails and letters from anguished and angry women and their associates have been delivered to the government to the Aontú leader, Peadar Tóibín, who has described their content as “heartbreaking” and deeply distressing.
“It is now clear that the restrictions around maternity services are inhumane and disproportionate,” she said.
“We must remember that one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage in this country. No woman should face this bad news alone, in the corridor of a hospital without a partner to support her ”.
The correspondence indicates the level of anxiety and frustration with the decision not to allow couples to enter the 19 maternity hospitals in the state, particularly due to the anomaly scan. Couples are allowed in for deliveries, but not for scans or emergency procedures. Some 172 people wrote to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and Taoiseach Micheál Martin over six weeks in the fall, and hundreds more since. A petition organized against the restrictions by the campaign group, Uplift, has gathered 52,000 signatures.
The HSE is expected to ask maternity facilities on Wednesday to allow members to visit for abnormalities, if possible. It is understood that the new advice is due to lower rates of transmission in the community, as well as listening to the opinions of patients and doctors.
A woman who suffered a miscarriage wrote to Mr. Donnelly in September asking why it was acceptable for six people to socialize while having no partners in maternity hospitals.
“I had to sit alone in a room to be told that my baby had died. They sent me alone out of this room reeling from what I had just heard and [LEFT TO)]sit sobbing in a busy hallway from the living room.
“This is simply unacceptable. At no point was I allowed to have my husband present to provide him with any comfort. I sat for hours alone and devastated in one of their maternity hospitals. Not a single person to offer me the comfort I craved and needed. “
Another woman wrote: “I am currently in my second pregnancy. My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage which I’m sure I don’t have to tell you was a very stressful and traumatic experience. Fortunately, I had the support of my partner and my mother when I heard this terrible news. Without that support, I don’t know how I would have done it. Now my heart breaks for anyone who had to hear those words just because of the restrictions. ”
A woman who received fertility treatment recalled two failed pregnancies in 2019.
“I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to go to my first scan without my husband when the monitor went dark and the midwife told me there was no heartbeat.
“It is an unexpected and momentous experience that no woman should have to go through alone and it is a scandal of our time that women are forced to endure this.”
A woman, writing to the Taoiseach, spoke of having experienced a global pandemic during pregnancy.
“I attended all the scans on my own. I attended appointments on my own. Prenatal classes were canceled. Social interactions with other new mothers just weren’t possible … I was admitted to the hospital for one night at 31 weeks.
“I had high blood pressure and was experiencing dizziness. My husband was very worried, but all he could do was drop me off at the hospital door. I felt so weak and scared trying to find my way through the hospital. I had to be practical and keep thinking that I need to be strong for our baby. “
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