Giving birth 100 km away is the new norm for pregnant Pincher Creek patients

Catherine Calling Last remembers breathing through her contractions and hoping she would make it as her husband drove down the highway between Pincher Creek and Lethbridge.

"Sometimes your labour can just kick right into full gear … and baby's ready to come out. I was thinking about the worst-case scenario," she recalled. 

"It was a little bit stressful. I really wanted to have baby closer to home."

Calling Last gave birth at the Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge, more than one 100 kilometres away from her hometown, earlier this month.

She's part of a new generation of maternity patients from Pincher Creek who are expected to travel elsewhere to deliver their babies, as the number of local health-care providers dwindles.

"Rural maternity is at risk both in Alberta and across the country," said Dr. Jared Van Bussel, one of just four family physicians currently providing maternity care in Pincher Creek.  Another doctor is on leave and expected to return next year.

For years he's been the only physician in town who is trained to perform caesarean sections, leaving him on call around the clock, with the exception of vacations.

The community has lost a number of doctors, including surgeons and anesthetists in recent years, he said.

"For the last two years, every time a delivery came through the door, the response was, 'Oof, I don't think we've got the staffing for that today," he said.

"There was a lot of fear and trepidation about not having the people that we needed."

He wrote an open letter, earlier this year, warning the situation was no longer sustainable and that, as the only surgeon there, he could not support labour and delivery beyond May 31.

With no solution in sight, the doctors stopped providing routine labour and delivery at their local hospital at the end of May, according to Van Bussel.

Maternity patients are being transferred to doctors in Lethbridge for care during the last few weeks of their pregnancy.

Deliveries are still supported in Pincher Creek on an emergency basis, he noted, when it is not considered safe to send them.