When the hospitals are run the DMV
Woman forced to give birth to dead baby in hotel
A mother says she was forced to give birth to her still-born child over a toilet in a hotel room after she was turned away from the East Kootenay Regional Hospital because of a lack of beds.
Jennifer Norgate, a mother of three in Elkford, B.C., began her ordeal May 30 when she and her husband Carl travelled to a Calgary clinic for an ultrasound to determine the gender of their 18-week-old unborn baby.
“We were excited to find out if we were having a boy or a girl and to let our other three children know if they would have a brother or a sister,†Norgate said in a letter sent to Premier Gordon Campbell, Health Minister George Abbott, local MLA Bill Bennett and others.
“Unfortunately, we found out that our baby had died approximately four weeks earlier. We were sent home to see our family doctor the next day.â€
Her doctor gave Norgate medication to induce labour and quickly arranged for the couple to see a gynecologist in Cranbrook, a two-and-a-half-hour drive away in southeastern B.C.
But when they got to Cranbrook, they were told there were no beds at the hospital. She was told she’d have to wait in the emergency room or go to a hotel.
Because the couple had no way of knowing how long it would take Norgate to deliver the fetus, they chose to go to a hotel and planned to return to the hospital when labour set in.
Norgate said in her letter she went into labour just before 3 a.m. on June 1 and delivered the dead fetus herself in the bathroom.
When you make something ‘free’, everyone with a stinky fart thinks they need to go to a hospital.