Today@Dal

When Lisa Goldberg walks into a room to find a new mother, babe in her arms and surrounded by family, the nurse’s first question will always be the same: Who is everybody?

It may seem like an obvious thing to ask, but often clinicians — and society — jump to assumptions about what a new family looks like.

The “mommy, daddy, baby” image, as Goldberg calls it.

Instead of assuming that the man standing on one side of the bed is the father, it’s critical to ask, says the Dalhousie University nursing professor. The health-care system is a creaky, old institution that was first built on what are known as heteronormative beliefs — or, more simply, the idea that everyone who comes through the hospital door is straight.

While there’s a lot of study going into dispelling those assumptions, when it comes to queer birthing, Goldberg says the health-care system can be especially challenging for a new family with a different set of needs.

“When two women enter the health-care system, more often than not, initially they were thought of as sisters or friends and not as partners, unless they were incredibly overt,” she says her research found.

Goldberg has collected the experiences of LGBQ women who have given birth in urban settings and is in the middle of conducting similar research in rural hospitals.

“There was a lot of teaching of health-care providers about their experiences,” Goldberg says of the connecting thread in the stories. “And while collaborating with a provider is certainly something we would want in that relationship, always having to be the educator is not what we would want for (patients).”

When Lara Morris recalls the birth of her daughter in 2005, she remembers nothing but a positive experience in which she and her partner were recognize as co-parents.

That said, the Halifax woman says she and her partner introduced themselves as a couple and made it clear they were in a loving relationship and co-parents.

“We would use the term partner, and that was how we were received and responded to,” Morris says. “You’re giving people the norms that you want them to follow. I don’t know what would have happened if I had not gone in and done that, but we always made it very clear.”

The couple’s daughter turned 10 last March — and was born in the same year that same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada. It was around that time as well, that the intake forms for parents-to-be began to change at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax so that instead of simply “mother and father” it would list “biological mother and other parent” as options.

To read more (http://m.thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1316286-health-care-system-challenging-for-lgbq-women-giving-birth)