© Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto StarAsish Purushan holds baby Sidharth Jiwan Lall-Purushan with husband Krishneel Lall, left, and surrogate Mazyline McCarthy at Michael Garron Hospital.
She'd had her own children there and said the place "felt like home."
What first-time parents Purushan and Lall didn't realize was how quickly it would make them feel at home too.
"We get treated a little differently because people always think we're brothers or twins or friends and we laugh along and people don't assume - it never gets to their mind that we could be spouses," said Purushan of the struggles he and Lall face within institutions.
But, at the family birthing centre at Michael Garron Hospital (MGH), the first thing he and his partner were asked was how the staff should address them.
"And I thought, that's so refreshing. I was like 'oh my god, this is amazing,'" said Purushan, who was so impressed he wrote a thank-you letter.
MGH is in the process of making itself an LGBTQ inclusive environment for all families. This includes staff being trained on how to care for gender diverse individuals and what language to use, LGBTQ families presenting about their experience at weekly rounds and surveys being sent to past patients on their experience. The hospital even had a booth at Pride.
As part of this effort, Purushan and Lall were able to set up a birth plan, learn about the hospital's surrogacy policy, get a tour of the unit and meet the team before their baby was born.
Laura Gibbon, the education and training lead at the 519, said the City of Toronto agency that offers support services for the LGBTQ community has been working with MGH since 2015, adding the hospital has committed to training 1,000 of their front line staff with them.
"It's definitely very unique," said Gibbon of MGH's venture, adding it's leading the charge and should be used as an example for other organizations.
"It's the right thing to do and it's also the law in Ontario. People face huge kinds of liabilities if they are not doing this kind of work and ensuring that the entirety of their staff is competent and comfortable in providing care in a respectful and affirming way to LGBTQ identifying folks."
Comment: So failure to pander to a patient's chosen identity - which can change on a whim - could leave you open to prosecution: Transexual man claims to be 'transracial', says he 'feels Filipino'
Purushan said simple things at MGH, such as a nurse asking questions about how a couple met, not making assumptions and showing interest in their story, made the experience more welcoming.
"People shouldn't be discriminated based on anything - sexual orientation, colour of their skin, how they self-identify - everyone should feel welcomed and safe, especially coming to a hospital," said Jennifer Bordin, the hospital manager of newborn and child health services, of reasons behind its initiative.
The hospital has changed its policies to be gender neutral by removing words such as "him" or "her" and "mother" or "father," asking what pronouns people would like to be referred to when they come in, and changing bathroom signs from pictures of a man or woman to a picture of a toilet and sink, Bordin said.
And it's not just for same-sex couples, she added. It's for transgender people, single mothers and families where there are multiple parents involved.
"Before our policy would say 'women in labour,' " Bordin said. "So we've removed that and it's 'the pregnant person.' Everything that says breast feeding is also referred to as chest feeding."
The 519's Gibbon said the organization is eager to expand its training, but added hospitals need to make the commitment to the work.
"This work is not slowing down. As the conversation evolves societally, more and more organizations will find themselves having to embark on this journey. Our hope is that organizations come to that realization sooner than later."
As for Purushan and Lall, they had their baby boy, Sidharth Jiwan Lall-Purushan, Wednesday.
"Being treated the same was very heartwarming," said Lall of his experience at the hospital. "Just making us realize, 'hey, we are accepted here. We can be ourselves.' "
Comment: While treating people with respect and providing a personlized service is admirable, the steady deterioration of objective reality leaves society wide open to an insidious future: