A pregnant woman had to give birth on a couch in a hospital waiting room because the hospital was overcrowded and short-staffed.
The woman, whose identity has not been made public, told News 9 Australia that she went to Westmead Hospital in Sydney on July 31 after her water broke while she was walking her dog.
She said that when she and her husband were admitted, they were asked to stand in a hallway.
“At one point, I felt as if the baby [wasn’t] moving much, so I asked to get monitored. So they [put us] in a waiting room, and there were two couples already in the waiting room monitoring their baby’s heartbeat,” she said in a video interview with News 9 Australia.
When her labor started moving quickly, a quick-thinking midwife acted fast, placing towels on a couch and helping the woman lie down there.
“I feel really bad about it, but she kicked out everyone from that waiting room,” the woman recalled.
The woman gave birth safely, but there were still no beds available in the maternity ward. She was eventually moved to the gynecology ward at Westmead Hospital.
“The midwife who was in charge told me that there are 17 people in this gyno unit and there are only three [employees], so that ratio is very off. That was my exposure to the staffing problems,” she said.
A midwife, who spoke anonymously to News 9 Australia, said, “Conditions are the worst [they’ve] ever been. We need more midwives, but who would want to work for or value a hospital that doesn’t value or listen to them under harsh working conditions?”
In a statement to PEOPLE, a spokesperson for the Western Sydney Local Health District said, “Over the evening of 31 July, Westmead Hospital’s birthing unit was very busy and experienced a higher than average number of births with 24 women in the birthing unit. Birthing can be unpredictable, with patient needs and clinical urgency fluctuating rapidly due to the spontaneous nature of labor and delivery.”
The spokesperson also thanked the midwives on staff that day for their professionalism and dedication.
