Jessica Ryan

Hi, Ciarán.

I had a baby seven months ago under private care, and I felt Vincente O'Toole's piece on the rotunda came across deeply misogynistic and dismissive of women's experiences.

And it also lacked any real appreciation, I suppose, of the complexity of maternity care and the realities of women currently navigating the system.

And I suppose I

took particular umbrage to the framing of women who choose private care as seeking a posh push um because i would just love to know what the definition of that is is it seeking um pain care is it epidurals is it abdominal birth um or is it consultant-led care and i just can't really believe that this is 2026 and this is the discourse

OK, that's convenient for him.

I just think it reduces a deeply personal health care decision to a caricature.

You know, it ignores the many reasons women make choices to go private, to go public, to go semi public.

private and it's just very nuanced and I suppose for me why I chose to go private and continuity of care was the deciding factor for me.

I lost a baby and I experienced significant challenges while navigating that loss within the public system and that's just my experience.

I know people who have had incredible experiences with the public system and

And in my case, I wanted that reassurance of seeing the same face if I had a subsequent pregnancy, which I did seven months ago.

And for me, that was the best decision.

Now, it didn't come lightly at all.

I was living with my in-laws at the time.

My husband and I lived with them for 15 months after we returned back from Canada to start a family.

and we looked at the financial aspect i had just started a new job and at the time wasn't guaranteed paid maternity leave and so we looked at you know obviously the cost of public semi-private and private and i also worked two jobs last year to um to to pay for this care and which um i was more than happy to do so and it's an absolute privilege to access private health care i know that

But it wasn't the case that I just had, you know, a couple of grand lying around.

It was a very thought out and measured decision by me and my husband.

And I remember actually last night when this issue was swirling through my head, we had a conversation.