A Toronto-area hospital is getting set to open what is believed to be the country’s first self-contained midwifery clinic within a hospital, giving expectant parents another choice for welcoming their new baby to the world.

Next week, Markham Stouffville Hospital will open what’s called an Alongside Midwifery Unit, or AMU: a hospital-based birth unit operated and staffed completely by midwives.

The unit will allow women to use a midwife and still deliver in hospital but also be within reach of the obstetrical unit in case the birth doesn’t go as planned.

“We worked really hard with our consumers to build this unit and they told us they wanted to have their babies in a birth centre environment, but many of them wanted to have it in a hospital where they had access to other things,” Carol Cameron, executive director for the in-hospital midwife unit at Markham-Stouffville hospital, told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.

Midwives have been attending births at Markham-Stouffville Hospital since 1994, but these births have always taken place in traditional hospital rooms. The new birth unit will be stocked with unique equipment that can help facilitate natural births.

They include:

  • birthing stools for sitting deliveries,
  • a birthing tub for water deliveries,
  • a large exercise ball, which a labouring mother can lean against during contractions,
  • a sling, from which women can hang their shoulders or belly, to stay in an upright position.

“We know that women left to their own devices will move around,” Cameron said. “Very rarely women get into a bed.”

At the same time, patients will still have access to a medical team on the same floor, should they need obstetrical or neonatal assistance, diagnostic services, or anesthesia.

Expectant mothers in Ontario who choose to deliver with the help of a midwife can already have the birth at home or in hospital, or at three birthing centres (the Ottawa Birth and Wellness Centre, the Toronto Birth Centre or at the birth centre on Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.)

These birth centres offer private suites furnished with equipment to facilitate natural births, but hospital-based services such as epidurals, labour inductions, and electronic fetal monitoring are not available.

Lisa Joyce, the vice-president of communications & public affairs at Markham Stouffville Hospital, says the obstetrical wing of the building was built to incorporate the AMU within easy reach.

“If you need a C-section or another type of medical assistance, you can walk just 100 feet down the hall,” she told CTVNews.ca.

Mothers who have normal deliveries will be able to labour and birth, and then go home with their new baby a few hours later -- generally without ever interacting with a doctor at all.

Mothers who use a midwife typically have shorter hospital stays than those in the care of physicians, because midwives also provide up to six weeks of follow-up care at home or in midwifery clinics after hospital discharge.

Midwives supported just over 24,000 births in Ontario in 2016-17 -- about 16 per cent of all births. Nearly three-quarters of those chose a birth in hospital. Joyce says this new midwifery unit gives parents yet another option.

The unit will be officially unveiled next Tuesday and will begin taking patients in early July. It’s expected the unit will be used for about 60 births per month, which should then increase to about 100 births per month by 2024.