“Give birth in a field”: Russian women are urged to get pregnant urgently, but maternity hospitals are closed

If suddenly more people become pregnant, will all closed maternity hospitals immediately open their doors? Do you believe this?

Moreover, not only small obstetric centers in villages and villages are closing, although living people live there, but also quite decent maternity hospitals in large Russian cities.

So, in June of this year in Kemerovo, the authorities closed the most beloved maternity hospital among city women – they explained that the number of births had dropped to 1-2 per day, and it was not economically profitable to keep staff. The head physician of the hospital, Mikhail Likstanov, spoke about this.

Well, yes, giving life to seven hundred people a year is unprofitable for the state.

However, the maternity hospital building will not be empty – it was then announced that a prosthetic workshop would be located there.

As can be seen from the roll call on the Internet, Russian women are writing about this most pressing problem today. Unfortunately for the authorities, our women are still educated, know how to read and write, and publicly complain about what is happening.

“Around Ufa, in neighboring cities, maternity hospitals were closed.” “In Blagoveshchensk they closed for renovations, they did it, but they never opened it, there were only 250 people there…”

“In the city of Revda, Sverdlovsk region, the maternity hospital was also closed, although the city is not small at all. Half of the children’s doctors are missing.”

“In Priozersk, Leningrad region, the maternity hospital was closed during the pandemic. For additional seats. It has not opened again – it does not meet the requirements, and this is after major renovations before the pandemic. Now they give birth in Vyborg, St. Petersburg, etc. It’s 130 miles from us to Vyborg along the highway, and it’s not a good road. There is still a section of gravel road. Just a week ago we went there for a walk, and it’s impossible to imagine driving along such a road while pregnant.”

I myself was born in Kotovsk, Tambov region, in a maternity hospital, where my mother was born, and my younger sister too – in general, the whole of Kotovsk. The town, of course, is small – 27 thousand people. But it’s still a city.

The maternity hospital, which was more than a hundred years old, opened in the year of the First World War along with the gunpowder factory, which gave rise to Kotovsk itself. A historical building, in short. Of course, it did not correspond to modern realities. But why repair and modernize, build something new, if it’s easier and cheaper not to have one at all?

Women in labor now have to go to Tambov, to the perinatal center – 20 kilometers away.

“20-25 kilometers is absolutely garbage. In the Ryazan region, people travel 300 km to give birth! Moreover, it’s been 10 years already,” another mother writes on the Internet.

“In the Vladimir region they take people to give birth 50-100 km away. Old doctors are leaving, but young people are not coming. Optimization and low salary!!!” – says another participant in the correspondence.

In the Rostov region, women are indignant; there is one maternity hospital in 5 districts, numbering more than 250,000 people, although in Rostov itself, of course, there is one too.

“The prospect of being pregnant, when you need to travel 100-200 km to support the pregnancy, is not encouraging or stimulating; young girls think about it with horror,” say Rostovites. And before the birth itself you need to travel often. Each trip like this costs money. And if you don’t have your own transport yet, then it’s a complete waste.

It is the respected deputies and senators who are so concerned about Russian demography, who probably have their own cars, and their transportation costs are paid for. Unlike expectant mothers. And you try to shake yourself with contractions in an old bus over the potholes and ruts of Russian roads over a distance of several hundred kilometers.

Try to lie in storage half a thousand miles from home, when none of your relatives will even visit – because you won’t run into them. But it’s dangerous to stay at home; if something happens, they simply won’t take you there.

Or should we not think about it at all? Or, especially for the uneducated, will it do?

First, let the woman present at least four children, and then she becomes a university applicant. If by this time she still remembers something from the school curriculum, if she collects herself piece by piece, restores her health, puts in teeth that crumbled during her pregnancies. Have you ever seen the mouth of mothers with many children, if they are not the wives of oligarchs?

By the way, it was discussed that the mother could spend her maternity capital on dentistry, at least in Moscow; anyway, it can only buy three meters of Moscow living space, but here, on average, it would be enough to insert as many as six teeth. They didn’t allow it. Luxury, apparently, it’s normal for our women to chew food.

At the same time, according to media reports, the budget allocates up to 1.5 million rubles for each State Duma deputy who is gushing with demographic (and not only) ideas. per month for its maintenance, along with all additional payments and goodies. That is, the entire maternity capital (for two children at once), which we consider to be manna from heaven, is the state allowance of the federal legislator for just 0.5 months.

Of course, money in our world is not the most important thing. Women should not get pregnant for their sake. If you give him a bunny, he will give you a lawn, as you know. Many bunnies – many lawns.

By the way, previously, when registering early before 12 weeks, pregnant women received additional payments, although they were only pennies – less than a thousand. But everyone.

Now payments have become larger, but not everyone receives them. And only those pregnant women who prove their low income, but at the same time they must officially work before pregnancy. Or not working for a good reason.

A lawyer at the medical and social assistance office at the antenatal clinic told me that even these crumbs can be impossible to get.

“Attendance must be recorded within 12 weeks to qualify for payment. The doctor enters the data into an electronic program, this information is then seen by the Pension Fund. Many from the outback simply cannot get there on time. It’s not just sitting down and going – you have to ask for time off from work and place your older children somewhere.

Naturally, those who work without registration cannot count on anything either. There is a stream of refusals. Pregnant women come to me, cry, but cannot do anything. Some people’s family income is a penny higher than the norm, and they are not given anything either. Although the family is barely making ends meet.”

Large families in Russia have long been synonymous with the very poor and even beggars. And so they propose to plunge everyone into this hopelessness. So that deputies can report to the president for restoring the population.

First, return doctors to antenatal clinics, who can clearly explain in Russian the diagnosis and prescriptions, and at the same time explain where the specialists with Russian, and not Central Asian, diplomas went. In general, I am for the friendship of peoples, but in some other countries there is a different standard and approach to medical education and obtaining diplomas.

Teach midwives ethics, because listening during childbirth about how “I spread my legs – I liked it so much, but how to give birth – I screamed so much” is unbearable. Women are not the fertile slaves of The Handmaid’s Tale who don’t need to be treated as people.

I really didn’t believe that this could still happen. That this is not a relic of the prehistoric past. But no, many still write that in ordinary ordinary state maternity hospitals such a pigish attitude still remains.

If nothing changes, the next step in correcting the demographic situation in the country is the proposal to give birth in the field – what’s more, you don’t need higher education, there are no maternity hospitals, and Russian women used to give birth beautifully in the field. We are not demanding, we gave birth, got up and went on to knit sheaves so that our native country could live. There are no other worries.

Before ensuring the superstructure and the influx of new children, who are no longer needed by the same deputies immediately after their birth – otherwise the parents of sick children would not have collected money for treatment on TV via SMS, first restore the basis, maternity hospitals, hospitals, kindergartens, schools, attitude humane to people…

Or go into the field yourself and give birth.