MATERNAL MORTALITY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19200, 17 June 1924, Page 5

MATERNAL MORTALITY.

Sm. —I lead with great interest the letter in to-day’s paper from “A Medical Practitioner Who is Also a Mother” on maternal mortality. As olio who has suffered the treatment she mentions at one of the fit. Helens Hospitals, I would like to express an opinion on the subject. The system of the fit. Helens Hospitals is not very ,kmd. In the first place, in spite of Sir Maui Pomare’s assurance that labour is a normal physiological process, it is also a shook to the system from which in a few cases the patient never really recovers, and it is in the interests. of humanity that something should be done to alleviate at least some of the pain. I admit it is not always possible to do so in the first stages, but what woman would deny (he boon and how many plead for it? Secondly, there is a lot of talk about the declining birth rate. 1 'wonder if it. has occurred to any of those who arc engaged in the ‘‘Maternal Mortality Campaign” that there are means by which a good deal of their cause for concern may be removed. Take, for example, a young expectant mother who goes foi her confinement, to a hospital where no ameslhetic or medical help is provided. In anv case, there is always a dread and f'-.-w of complications even with mothers of large families, but for a young expectant mother stepping into the unknown! what a trial H is! Unconsciously she hopes that she may never suffer again, and it is no wonder that our women shirk and dread motherhood when they have to submit: to such pain. Until we have better methods for child-birth there will always be talk cf birth control and decreased birth rale. I am speaking not only on bchalt ot other mothers, but from experience, and I am also one of the unfortunates that have needed the operations to which ‘ A Medical Practitioner” refers. I am one among millions, and it is “up to our medical practitioners who are also mothers to state tho case for the mothers of the future generation. It is they and they only who understand belter than any medical man, however clever he may be. Ihey have been through it and (hey know that wh’ch man will never know. Then again, I see that regret is expressed that very few women avail themselves of the privilege of ante-natal clinics. The reason of this is not suggested. No woman either expecting her ursl or her twelfth child, cares to go into intimate details of her ecudilion with, say a young girl who knows nothing beyond knowledge received from charts and diagrams or a slitf matronly woman who condescends to explain things to her in a simonpr sort of wav. They don’t know mere ihan wlmt (he medical books say. and in real life no two women feel and are alike at (hat period Xo if we are poing to have ante-natal clinims established let us have advisers who are medical practitioners and who are also mothers —mothers with knowledge and sympathy This combined with alleviation ol pain’’will do a great deal towards decreasing the maternal mortality and increasing tin* birth tale. —1 am, etc., J PST A MOTHER. Wingaiui. June IS.

TO THE EDITOR.