Moms and babies to benefit from Lions Club donation

Construction will soon begin on our Labour and Delivery unit and once complete, families will have more permanent and quicker access to water therapy when giving birth in Kingston.

It’s all thanks to a recent donation of $110,000 by the Lions Club of Kingston. The funds, which were donated through the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation (UHKF), will be used to purchase permanent labour tubs for two of our Labour and Delivery rooms on Connell 5. 

“We do about 2,000 deliveries a year here at Kingston General Hospital,” said Dr. Graeme Smith, head of Obstetrics and Gynecology during the cheque presentation ceremony. “We know that the use of water therapy during labour decreases the need for things like epidurals or other things for pain control, like narcotics.”

Two years ago KGH became one of the first hospitals in Canada – and the first and only academic, tertiary, complex-care centre in Ontario – to provide in-hospital water births. Currently, inflatable tubs are used to provide water-therapy or water births in the hospital.

The trouble with providing the service using inflatable tubs is that in cases where labour progresses quicker than expected, there may not be time to set up the tubs which take about an hour to fill.

Nicole Pierce is a UHKF employee who is currently on parental leave after the birth of her son. She spoke to the Kingston Whig-Standard after the cheque presentation ceremony. 

“I've delivered all three children here at KGH, including my son just six months ago. When we were preparing for delivery, we had the option of having a water labour or water birth. However, the timing didn't work out for us, because my labour was just progressing too quickly that we didn't have time to set up the tub.”

“On behalf of all the families and the future families that will be delivering their children here at KGH, thank you so very much," said Pierce. "This means a lot to all the expecting mothers and fathers. You are going to help us have the absolutely best start possible when we're delivering our children here.”

This is not the first major donation the Lions Club has made to the Kingston Health Sciences Centre. In 2015 they donated $100,000 towards the purchase of a second MRI machine for our KGH site. A large portion of the funds for both donations came from the sale of their building on John Counter Boulevard more than a year ago.

It’s expected that the new tubs will be in place in our Labour and Delivery unit sometime in the next few months.