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THIS TIME LAST year I was 35 weeks pregnant. I was standing in the Rotunda Hospital clutching my urine sample in a crowded corridor waiting to see ‘the consultant’. I waited for over two and a half hours.
I waited not because I was going to have my baby there – but because I was not going to have my baby there, My pregnancy had been deemed low-risk, and I was planning a home birth. It turned out that I waited so that the consultant could give me a 15-minute lecture on safety. The consultant told me it was his duty as a Health Professional to advise me of the risks involved in having my baby at home. Home birth was OK for second time mothers or Scandinavians where there is proper infrastructure, but not for women living in Ireland (even if they were Scandinavian)!
Nobody ever thought to tell me about the dangers of giving birth in hospital. Nobody in the Rotunda mentioned the swine flu outbreak at Christmas 2010, or the fact that the ceiling collapsed outside an operating theatre in July 2011. Nobody mentioned MRSA. There was no mention of the Bump to Babe Consumer Guide to Maternal Services which had come out that very day. Nobody told me in the Rotunda that as a first time mother I had a 29.7 per cent chance of having a Caesarean section and only a 10.9 per cent chance of having what the Rotunda classifies as a normal birth.
Neither did anyone think to mention that if I was lucky enough to live within the catchment of one of only two midwifery-led units in the country I would have an 83.3 per cent chance of a vaginal birth. Or if I lived south of the Liffey and was within the catchment of the NMH Domino midwives I would have an 87 per cent chance of a normal vaginal birth.
But we need to move beyond the safety issue. Time after time the research shows that midwifery-led care, whether at home or in hospital, has better outcomes with less interventions than consultant-led care; yet we are still stuck with a medical model for childbirth.
Krysia Lynch from the Home Birth Association says, “Midwives are the key professionals in normal birth. They view birth as a normal physiological experience. In contrast obstetrics is the profession that deals with abnormality in birth; here birth is only viewed as normal in hindsight. Part of the problem is also that we as a society have bought hook line and sinker into the great urban myth that we need to be in hospital to be safe and that we need a consultant to give birth.
“Indeed, some 15 per cent of high-risk women do need these things, but where does that leave the 85 per cent of us that are low risk? I’ll tell you where. It leaves us facing unnecessary interventions in busy maternity units stretched to their limits.”
Recently the Minister for Health James Reilly told the Irish Times that more women should be offered the option of birthing at home in Ireland. Surprisingly, this news was greeted with a torrent of negativity from lead consultant obstetricians. The very same lead obstetricians who last winter publicly announced that the maternity units they managed were understaffed and potentially unsafe.
Whilst re-structuring of the maternity system to enable more midwifery-led care and greater domiciliary options for mothers will indeed incur start up costs, in the long run all the research indicates that this will be more cost-effective and will offer mothers and babies better outcomes, greater choice and more satisfaction.
Mothers choose to birth at home for many reasons. The most commonly cited one is safety, followed closely by the continuity and quality of care provided by a midwife. Many mothers like that labour can take its own course without the interruption of a car journey to hospital. The familiar surroundings of home and the lack of hospital routines help to make birth more normal and less frightening, and also allows for mothers to stay close to other relatives, additional birth partners and older children.
Childbirth is something that many women have been encouraged to fear, but for me it was the most empowering experience of my life. My midwife met me first when I was 12 weeks pregnant and at every antenatal visit stayed at least two hours, learning about me and my fears and my cares. She prepared me, coached me and mentored me for the eventual marathon that was my labour and natural birth. When my daughter was born she was laid on my chest and my midwife helped me to latch her on the breast.
It was hours before she was weighed and dressed as my midwife was reluctant to interrupt our skin to skin contact. It was many more hours before she left and not before she had shared a celebratory dinner in our kitchen and tucked me, my husband and baby in bed together. One of the greatest advantages of giving birth at home is that your partner is not sent home and indeed my baby spent most of her first night asleep on her father’s chest. What an amazing start to their bond.
My home birth experience with my first child was not so much about having a baby at home but about giving me and my baby and my family the best start together. Whether you want to give birth at home or in hospital, it should always be about where you feel safest – but everyone deserves the level of care I received.
A midwife at the recent International Conference on Human Rights and Childbirth summed it up, when she said: “It is a fundamental human right for women to choose the circumstances in which they give birth, with whom and where, including a choice between hospital and home birth.”
Eva-Louise Goussot is a member of the Home Birth Associaiton. For more information on home birth see homebirth.ie. Bump2babe is the consumer guide to maternity services in Ireland. Anyone looking for support around maternity issues in general can contact Aims Ireland.
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I don’t think we needed a survey to tell us the obvious.
A lot of farmers I know are routers always tricking about.cant see how they get grants though.thats just like me setting up a business and if I don’t make any profit,going to the government lookin for a money to keep me in business.it would never happen then why should farmers get these grants
Because these farmers provide the food you eat, the food everyone needs
That we pay for twice.first through grants then in the shops
What you’re forgetting is that farmers are producing our FOOD!! Without them everything we ate would be coming from across the waters and we would be completely reliant on imports.
We need our farmers, they should be the highest paid workers in the land!
Ah now Barbara relax highest paid workers in the land?i agree we need farmers but profitable farmers
Most food in this country is already coming from abroad… We didn’t need this report to tell us that farmers haven’t changed with the times.
The price hikes on food happen between the food leaving the farmer and reaching the consumer. It’s the middle man is making the money here.
It doesn’t matter where the price hikes are happening. The fact that you have contingency budgets for things like fodder by the DoA because of rain is all you need to show that farmers haven’t adapted. It’s Ireland. It rains here 367 days of the year. Unless you move the country there ain’t much you can do. Yet there are still farmers on my radio and on my television giving out about the weather and how hard things are for them. That’s fine, what are you (the farmer) gonna do in order to change that. Complain away, no bother, but that ain’t gonna cut it. Change, or leave the industry so that those who are productive and economical can have a chance.
Hey. Wander arch. You seem to know a lot about farming. You want to come and work with me . You must have loads of ideas to help me not feed my stock for the last 9 months indoor were normal we do it for 4.5 months. I pay you same as I make this year . And cause I had to buy so much feed you better bring your cheque book to match how much I be making this year
A lot of you on here could do with spending a week on a farm and we will see how ye feel afterwards. A tough thankless job to feed the likes of ye who think their carrots grow on the bloody shelves in tesco.
You should spend a week in our jobs,where if you don’t make a profit your business goes under or you loose your job.you can’t go crying to the government looking for money
I do indeed know quite a bit about farming Paudy! I know how difficult it is, I know about the late nights and early mornings, and the difficulties of prediction and so on.
I also know, having seen most farmers in operation, were they in any other sector they wouldn’t exist. It’s not Ireland of 1964 any more, it’s 2013, and you need to adapt. Otherwise, become extinct.
I do spend every week working in “our” jobs.
Indeed Barbara, but the problem lies in political interference in farming. Farmers are told what they can and can’t do by the EU. The EU needs to butt out of Irish affairs, we don’t need the EU-they need us. One fine day the people of this wonderful little country will wake up to this fact.
WanderArch farming has changed beyond all recognition since 1983 not to mention 1963.
A few examples:
No where near as many farmers now. No where near as much produced then. Part time farming ( off farm employment) hardly ever heard of back then.
Cost of production sky rocketing now.
Cost of food to you in real terms less now than back then.
And of course the stick to beat the farmers with FARM SUBSIDIES.
Haven’t yet met a farmer who wouldn’t swap subsidies for proper farm gate prices and let the Supermarket giants go to hell!
Duh!
Im not a farmer but its hard to fathom the depth of ignorance been displayed here by people. Farming and the food industry is absolutely vital to the Irish economy and has to be maintained. Not only that the quality of the food produced is amongst the best in the world. The fodder crisis is caused by prolonged low temperatures rhis year…it is a national crisis ..not just a farming crisis. Solidarity should be shown and decisive action taken by government before animals have to be slaughtered because of lack of food.
Because the cost of food production (beef ,milk ,grain) is often higher than the price that the farmers get for their goods.so something has to fill the gap to keep the farmers in production , otherwise there would be no food .dont be so quick to lash out comments slating farmers and their grants.do some research , look at the facts
Blunt, maybe too simplistic, but not actually too far wrong. Change must come. The EU is not going to continue subsidising clearly uneconomic farms forever.
I agree
Legalise Hemp and let our farmers grow and sell. It has a massive annual yield and can be used in all manner of industries (paper, fuel, textiles etc.) Ireland could become a world leader in this regard and our farms would be saved (not to mention the economy)
Of course you aren’t just saying that because you like to smoke cannabis.
If the farmers start growing hemp who’s going to grow the food we need to eat?
Hemp is not the answer to all our problems.
Btw, I like my t shirts made from cotton not itchy hemp.
The cannabis by-product is a factir I’ll admit however the ecomic benefits of hemp in general should not be overlooked.
I dont propose they abandon their current produce but add rather use hemp as an addition to them. It doesn’t require enormous acreage to produce and has an 8-12 week cycle which could maximise the return on land which is currently idle. Of course regulation and security needs to be perfect but I would like to see this brought to the table as a potential solution to our farmers’ problems.
I don’t disagree with the general idea of growing a crop such as hemp which is essentially a raw material. I just find it funny that stoners will get very interested in the textile industry if it backs up their smoking.
Precisely. The change from food crops to bio fuel crops in many countries had led to an increase in the price of rice..leaving it beyond the reach of the poorvin places like the phillipines. Capitalism is the system we subscribe too but its also at the heart of the worlds problems. People must realise that there are, actually, more important things than turning a buck if its going to either ruin the enviroment and lead to human suffering.
The single farm payment is keeping non profitable farmers in business and thwarting the progress of more progressive, profitable, operators.
Just to add that the gambling on which year which will be chosen as the next reference year for the next single farm payment is driving land prices mental this year. It’s a ridiculous bloodbath where only the wealthy, or the foolish, win out.
Study finds that most farmers classify themselves as poor and would like more grants.
Hearing alot of stories of late of farmers killing cattle in fields cause they cant afford to feed them /and ultimately leading to suicide. Heard nothing in the papers regarding this, although its not like the papers to sweep suicide under the rug
Given the difficulties facing the various types of farms, I am somewhat surprised that the figure is as high as 37% being economically viable. It is a very tough life.
Jasus, your great Craic John!
John – you’re comments are disgraceful, but we know you mean them to be
LOL I am many things, but I am not John, whoever that may be.
John was here Monkey but looks like he was evicted!
Monkey – yes John three in two of his nuggets but they were removed.
The subsidies for these hobbyists need to stop and the land they waste put to more productive and economically viable uses.
What would you do with this land to make it more productive and economical?
If the subsidies were capped and aimed at smaller farmers it might help keep some of them on the land and rural population going. Paying a subsidy to a small farmer instead of dole would be more productive and it’s hard to see the justice in paying huge grants of anything over €20k to over €200k to some farmers because at that level they should be able to stay in production without assistance
Less meat production, which is incredibly wasteful. One acre of grain produces five times more protein than an acre of pasture set aside for meat production. Beans and spinach yield even higher rates of protein per acre. Add to that the methane created by livestock, which accounts for approximately ten per cent of global greenhouse gasses. I’m not a vegetarian, btw.
Still waiting for your ideas on how to make this wasted land more productive and economical without the use of farming.
Are we back to the farting bovine issue again?
Try cereal farming in the west if Ireland. Look at the % sunshine you need. The average temperature to grow it. Then look at the wests actual temperature, the amount of rainfall. Then if by some miracle you produced enough to make it economical to even bother harvesting it how are you going to get the heavy machinery into the waterlogged field ( ok getting it out not in would be the problem. How do you tow a combine stuck beyond redemption in mud. Its rather an expensive gamble when the odds of failure are about 90%. The cost of the seed. The machinery to sow it. The petrol for that machinery. The subcontractors to harvest it. Unless you want to buy a combine etc , the sprays throughout growth. The reason cattle and sheep are the main type of farming is logic. The south is more suitable for that kinda farming due to the higher temps. Sunshine etc ( or it used to be). Do you suggest the west stops farming and leaves the south to feed the whole of Ireland on cereal and veg and import meat from abroad?? As the greens bleat what about the carbon footprint? Are the tescos not going to factor in the transportation costs when pricing it?
Sorry, have a life to lead outside the Internet. How about forestry? It’s productive and better for the environment.
Funnily enough, farmers are paid double the grants for forestry than anyone else, for identical forests on identical land.
Try eating a tree !
nothing like Tree with my Sunday veg!
it takes up to 20+ years to grow a tree to a viable crop, a large proportion of our land is good crop producing land, given all the variables fall into place, but then again trees can suffer disease and fail, damage from storms, and fire.
But you can’t set the grain because of the weather. You can’t harvest the grain because of the weather.
Go to holland and learn from Dutch farmers.
I fully support our farmers. With more and more power being lost forever to the black hole that is Europe, how great it is that we still encourage and hold on to our own means of producing healthy, pure, land grown food by our own citizens.
It is important that farmers do their utmost to remain or become financially viable but if grants are needed at certain points to keep the system going I wholeheartedly agree with it.
Eh, the grants come from that black hole.
Larger farms are more efficient and more profitable. The subsidies are about dynastic land ownership.
Just because you don’t like a comment doesn’t make it inaccurate, farming is a bloody hard life, but why are we importing (crap) silage from UK and Europe, blaming the bad winter/spring don’t add up, UK and Europe had a much worse winter than us, yet they can export to us, who, even with a cold non growing spring, is much milder that Europe. A farmer friend (who has plenty of his own silage) put the problem down to over stocking and not thinking of the rainy day (late growing)
The cost I suppose, we didn’t have that. Problem cause we always make too much. ( just in case ) and 99% of this time it’s never needed and an extra needless expense but because you never know its safer to have it but some farmers are not able to afford to do that just on the tiny chance the worst happens like this year
Plenty of farms are too small to be viable. Regrettably the Bull McCabe mentality prevents the amalgamating of small farms in to larger profitable farms, giving the progressive farmers the chance the run successful and profitable enterprises. The innate conservatism of most farmers is supported by the subsidies which penalise those with ability.
Irish food will always be produced by Irish farms, despite the scaremongering, but a new system would allow it to be done in an efficient manner that the taxpayers don’t need to subsidise.
Cause it worked out so well last time a small percentage owned all the land. Our food was exported to England ( more profitable, you would have approved) while the Irish starved. The Irish famine.
Sham Rock – well said!
Sunshine, the Canadian or American model sees large farms run on a business-like basis that are efficient and profitable. Neither country suffers famine or shortages.
The Great Famine was caused by absentee landlords allowing produce to be sold abroad rather than in Ireland, where there was no money to buy it. Are you suggesting that creating larger farms would lead to mass poverty and the inability of Irish people to buy food? Would you further suggest that modern conditions and circumstances are less worthy of consideration than events that took place 170 years ago?
Score one for Monsanto (MON +0.66%), and score none for America’s centuries-old farming traditions.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on Monday that farmers can’t create new seeds from plants grown with Monsanto’s patented and genetically altered soybean seeds (pictured) strikes a blow against a tradition of seed saving, a technique that has basically allowed humanity to create an agricultural society.
The case will surely have implications for businesses based on innovations in fields as wide ranging as software and vaccines, as The New York Times points out.
Yet the people who are most likely to feel the impact first are other farmers, many of whom practice the age-old technique of seed saving.
Ya the amercian model works real well if your comfortable polluting your body with industrial crap. Haven’t we seen the damage that the race to the bottom for costs do. Imagine the cost that the horse meat scandal has caused
+1 for Sunshine. Sham Rock go and watch Food Inc. or David vs Monsanto. Get a clue as to how “well” the American model works and cop on a small bit.
De lads vote fine gael ya know…MOAR subsidies!!
every farmer I know is loaded! I kid not!
Older generation…that is..
best of luck to em!
This problem has many facets, historical, social and economic., but you all don’t recognise the elephant in the room, what do we do with these unviable farms, farmers and their families, is it just to remove them from the land, transplant them into suburbia, give them dole and other social transfers, or give them the social transfers, leave them on the land and be productive to the extent they can be, but they also have to except that this is their lot, their farm is not a viable business, and decisions have to be made.
This farmer may also have been brought up on this farm, developed the land, improved buildings ,invested in machinery and yet the farm is still not viable, this is a mental strain upon the farmer having been reared on the same farm with his siblings(pre-common market) he is no longer able to provide like his father did, it is not unusual to hear elderly retired farmers saying they wouldn’t like to be farming now, that for all the advances things are harder now for the small farmer. Like other members of Irish society the naughties were a time of increase access to credit unavailable to the small farmer in the past, and like our selves not on the land the chance to avail of this credit was hard to resist, the chance to move up, improve, but like the rest of us this has come at a price.
Alas the farmer is different than most groups in society, his land, stock, his yard are his/her tools, assets of the business, without these he cannot trade his dependence on the state is increased.
But this is not an Irish problem, this is a consequence of the Common Agricultural Policy, for better or worse, richer or poorer CAP keeps the small farmers on the land, keeps rural economies ticking over, the shops, vets, hackneys, ancillary contactors(silage etc.).
The consequence of abandoning the small farmer to market forces is evident in the UK, where towns and villages have become holiday bolt holes for the wealthy urbanites to come and go at holidays and weekends having a negligible footprint on local society and economy.
What about the other self employed who get nothing,farmers have their land to let or sell.Why are they getting social welfare?
Just for the sake of it. When there were no humans farming, before there were humans at all, what about the dinosaurs methane emissions, they had to produce more than the average animal. Yet the earths still here. They didn’t blow it up. Lol. Again when the Hunan population of the earth was tiny compared to the animal population. The earth still survived. How is it now when the animal population has never been as small is there a issue of animal farting going to end the world. Should we also put down some humans who’s methane emissions are above average.
Perhaps sauropod methane emissions caused the earth’s atmosphere to heat up to such an extent that it brought about their own extinction. Not unlike a giant Mesozoic spacesuit, filled with dino farts.
Always the same “come and work on our farm” argument. Come and stand in the deck of a boat for thirty hours at maybe two euros an hour and see how u get on.
The question is
What did the farmers do with the €1.3bn they got last year? Is the CAP just another rip off of the taxpayer?
http://www.electronic-recycling.ie/blog/index.php/2013/05/does-the-cap-have-the-same-effect-on-farming-efficiency-as-its-namesake-does-on-pregnancy/
So farmers should diversify and go and work at something else if their farms are not profitable. Well going by that business plan the thousands and thousands of farmers in America and Russia that grow the worlds supply of wheat, who are also in crisis due to drought should diversify and do something else. So then where does one get the wheat that from that is the raw material for a the majority of our food world wide.
There have been many businesses here in Ireland that were operating at a loss, i.e hotels, building contractors, shops, the list is endless, and they borrowed and borrowed money to keep going and now they are in Nama at enormous cost to the tax payer. The banks will not lend money to farmers to buy fodder. Dairygold and the likes will not deliver foodstuffs unless its cash upfront.
The climate has changed in a very short time worldwide and it’s having a drastic effect in food supply. It’s a knock on effect and people who are not familiar with farming (through no fault of their own), will pay more and more for their bread, milk, and meat, their daily essentials when the scarcity of this crop shortage hits hard. This problem is way above and beyond the issue if its wrong or right that farmers get grants or financial aid. It’s having enough food supply to not only feed animals but now also to feed the human population. It’s a massive crisis hitting each and every one of us.
have your say