Through a midwife’s eyes
Midwife Antoinette Saliba has been helping mothers deliver babies for the past 26 years and has witnessed at first hand the drop in fertility rate.
When she started work in 1985, live births stood at 5,587 compared with 4,126 in 2008, figures from the National Statistics Office show.
As the years rolled by, Ms Saliba said she noticed an increase in single mothers and a substantial rise in the number of children born outside wedlock.
In fact, figures show births outside marriage increased to 1,048 in 2008 from 367 in 1998.
She also noticed that married couples were having their first child later in life. Nowadays, many mothers were more prepared for what they were getting into as they read up on pregnancy.
Ms Saliba also noticed that as the birth rate dropped, inductions and Caesarean sections increased – the number of births through C-section increased by 16 per cent between 1995 and 2007.
Labour had become more “medicalised” and she missed the times when midwives could dedicate more time to mothers.
Midwives have long been saying that they would like to be more autonomous and follow the progress of a mother throughout the pregnancy and afterwards.
They are qualified to deliver a baby alone so long as there are no complications.