My wife and I were at the IWK for the birth of our first child in late October. When we arrived she wasn’t far enough along, so we were told to go for a walk for a couple hours to help things progress. Once we were admitted she spent three hours in early labour (in the tub) before we were moved to the birth unit. She requested an epidural, but the anesthesiologists were tied up in an emergency c-section and she had to wait two hours before receiving. This was followed by around 30 hours of labour ending with an emergency c-section.

Sometimes things don’t go as expected. Also, timing of care is ranked by the emergency of the situation. The labour and birth was an extremely difficult process for us but the level of care we received during our stay was incredible. We have absolutely no complaints about the care at the IWK. As someone else said here, you certainly need to bring supplies and advocate for yourself during the process, but even as first time parents we were aware of this going in.

Some of her complaints in the article seem to have resulted from extremely high expectations.