Steph Armstrong
Staff Reporter
MADAWASKA VALLEY – Some midwives wear scrubs and lab coats, while others wear jeans and t-shirts. Some midwives prefer hospital birth and others support water birth at home. One thing is for sure, midwives are as diverse as the clients they service.
“Because there’s a military base here, there’s been a strong uptake from the military. There’s a variety of religious communities that make use of midwifery services. There are queer families, secular families, single parent and teen households, Indigenous families…the diversity of the local population should be reflected in the diversity of the clients accessing care…I hope that we service all types of families,” said local midwife, Andrea Robertson, RM, BHSc, MHSc.
The first Canadian province to introduce midwifery legislation was Ontario. When the Ontario government appointed a Task Force on Implementation of Midwifery, the Task Force recommended that midwifery should be a recognized profession in Ontario, independent from medicine or nursing, with its own regulatory college and education program, and that midwives should practise as primary care providers.
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