essentialmidwifery

Birthy Thoughts by Jane E. Drichta and Jodilyn Owen

A Visit to the Kasana Hospital Part 1-Jane October 17, 2012

Filed under: Uganda,Uncategorized — EssentialMidwifery @ 12:27 am
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I can’t look away, and on some level, I don’t want to.  The young boy, maybe 7 years old, arches his back again, his entire body spasming, his face stuck in a grotesque and totally involuntary leer.  Sweat pours off his body, running down his neck, pooling on the black vinyl mattress. His mother, standing by his side, moves to support his head, but is stopped by a nurse, who explains softly that she could hurt his neck muscles, and to let the seizure take its course.  Not that it matters.  This boy has tetanus, and this boy is going to die.Tetanus is treated with metronidazole, diazepam, and tetanus immune globulin, none of which are available in this Level 4 Health Center that serves Kasana and the surrounding countryside.  The staff has only comfort measures to offer, and in this “hospital” nothing is comfortable.

It is hot inside the small run down building, sunlight and its attendant heat streaming in though the massive holes in the roof.  Add to that the humidity that naturally occurs when you have lots of people, especially lots of sick people, gasping in one room, rebreathing the same air over and over.  There is no ventilation, save the afore mentioned holes, and the stench is incredible.  And for now, it has all narrowed to this boy, this child and his mother, who can do nothing but watch, her tears adding just that much more moisture into a room already overburdened with misery.

Americans are mostly vaccinated against this disease, and even in those who do manage to acquire it, there is a 90% recovery rate. Not here. Here there is nothing to be done.  This hospital does not have the necessary drugs, nor does the bigger one a few towns away.  They will transport the boy anyway, to the larger hospital, but it is still hopeless.  Even with the needed drugs, by the time the spams, called opisthotonos, have reached this level of intensity, it is almost always too late.  They are strong enough to tear muscles, to cause fractures.  And they often affect the muscles surrounding the airway, causing brreathing difficulties. This family, at the very least, does have the money to transport their child.  Hundreds of others do not.  If you do not have the money for drugs or fuel, you or your child dies.  That is the harshest of realities.  Ostensibly medical care in Uganda is free, but if the hospital does not have the drugs you need, then it is up to your family to procure it from an outside pharmacy. But, what happens when the pharmacy does not have the drugs?  You die.  Just like this child, probably infected while playing outside in the dirt, just as children do the world over.  One child and one mother.

Everyone on our trip is a mother.  We have birthed our children into the world, transforming ourselves at the same time.  To look at this Ugandan woman, to share in her knowledge that her child is dying, and to be able to hold that seems impossible. How do we even do that?  Why don’t our hearts just crack wide open and we all just die right there?

On some level, I think they do.  I have held this vigil before, holding babies and children in my arms as they pass from one world to the next.  I’ve sat with parents, held mothers as they screamed their grief and anger and disbelief to the universe, when it seems there is no good or rightness in the cosmos.  To watch a child die is the unfairest of the unfair, and it is no different here than anywhere.

So I can’t look away.  It it an intrusion, to observe someone’s pain when you are in no position to help?  I don’t know.  Probably in America it would be.  Death is seen as private, and grief inconvenient.  We are so uncomfortable with death that we try to wish it away, pretending it doesn’t exist and those whom it touches are somehow weak, and perhaps even to blame.  But here, death, like life, is communal, part of a rich tapestry of family and community.  And so I offer myself as a witness, joining her world for a few moments, a silent chronicler of one mother’s worst nightmare.

 

“False Labor”: Misnomer of Grand Proportions–Jodilyn May 21, 2012

Filed under: Birthy Thoughts,Jane and Jodilyn — EssentialMidwifery @ 4:17 pm
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The language of pregnancy and birth showcase our society’s beliefs with perfect clarity. I can think of dozens of phrases that divide mother from baby, spirit from body, mind from health, and mother from inner knowledge. I want to look at just one phrase to showcase the way we approach these linguistic faux pas in midwifery care, and how we get to the bottom of events in pregnancy that can be difficult or seemingly in need of a cure.

We can attribute the language of divisiveness to many sinister roots and spend all day railing at The Machine and The Man–but why spin in circles when we can gain some insight instead?  Something I’ve learned over the years and hundreds of births: the roots lie beneath layers of asphalt, cement, cobblestone, and packed dirt. The energy required to dig them up and cultivate new soil and plant new trees is the work of modern midwifery. Meanwhile, we like to say we “forgive” those who have attached themselves to the practices that stem from these roots because that is their only paradigm and how they were trained. While that’s fair to some extent, each of us is responsible for lifting our heads so that we can partake of a broader vision. I know it’s not politically correct—but shame on all of us who are entrenched in one way of thinking, talking, and acting. And a double shame if that tunnel vision limits the experience of something so fundamental as the birth of a baby and a mother: the building blocks of any society. (And yes, this cuts both ways–midwifery care and homebirth are not the right fit for every woman.) What makes one person or another apt to lift their eyes and stretch their perspective or practice? I would call it holistic curiosity, and it should be taught in every medical and midwifery school. Actually, scratch that. It should be taught in every elementary school.

It is unfathomable to me that any person could witness birth and think only of the moving parts and mechanics of it, but there is where the roots of modern birth and the language and rituals that surround it lie. The medicalized perspective of birthing must work very hard to connect the parts that authentic midwifery honors as inextricably bound together. There are wonderful OB’s and OB nurses who see the whole woman—this is really not a message about them, it is a message about the environment, language, and curiosity that we surround ourselves with.

Back to the misnomer we are looking into: “False Labor”. This term is typically applied to bouts of contractions a mother has between 37 weeks and the onset of rhythmical contractions that get stronger and longer and culminate in birth. A contraction is an activity of the muscle. A mother cannot make her uterus contract the way we can flex our biceps. The uterus contracts in response to internal stimulation—be it from any of several maternal or fetal hormones, movement from the baby, an orgasm, or changes in the lower neck of the uterus called the cervix.

The idea that the body would generate activity, heat, and motion for false purposes is nothing short of absurd. Every contraction has a purpose. Each one massages baby, helps baby adjust its position in the pelvis, and stimulates receptor systems for hormones we need to birth our babies. Emotionally, contractions pull us inward and force us to spend time with our bodies and babies. They pull our attention from the world, the clock, the to-do lists. They teach us lessons about control and surrender. Often times in our busy lives it is the norm to be in a state of disconnect with our bodies. Mothering needs us present in our bodies. It demands that we feel and sense and respond to these feelings and sensations in order to ensure the very survival of our species. Contractions that come and go, sometimes for nights on end, and in fits and spurts help us acquire and practice these skills.

“False Labor?” I don’t think so. The body is wise and begs the mind’s attendance in this wisdom. A provider who looks a mother in the eye and tell her that this wisdom is “false”, and demands that she separate her wise body from her knowing sense of her truths does not see a whole woman in front of her. Midwifery care, at its very best, does not get lost in the mechanics, but honors the wisdom of the whole mother and her baby. It sees them work together in harmony to bring about motherhood in its richest, fullest sense, and babyhood with the right I wish every baby on this planet had—the right to a mother who has integrated her body and mind and honors her senses, her knowledge, her gut, and her heart and can be present for her baby. “False Labor?” I don’t think so. The next time we meet a mother who is contracting in these patterns, we can stand in awe at the integration of mother and baby, spirit and body, mind and health, and mother with her inner knowledge—and know, with absolute certainty, that there is nothing false about it.

 

On Grandmothers-Jane April 2, 2012

Filed under: Birthy Thoughts — EssentialMidwifery @ 2:53 am
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There are as many kinds of mother-daughter relationships as there are mothers and daughters, and I for one, can’t do that kind of math.  I’m an English major. And when it comes to baby having, things get even more complicated.  I’ve had clients who couldn’t imagine giving birth without their mothers,others who didn’t call their mother until the baby was 3 months old, and everything in between.  Like most aspects of the client-midwife experience, it is certainly not my job to get in the middle of those sorts of things.  No good can come from that.

However, if the pregnant mama has the type of relationship where she does feel comfortable with her mother’s presence, there is magic to be seen at these births. Babies wash out of us, riding a primordial slip and slide of blood, water, and change.  A woman becomes a mother in one instant, a man a father.  And for the mother of the mother, she is suddenly thrust up the ladder a rung, Whether she is ready or not, she is now a Wise Woman.

So speaking to the grandmothers, even if you consciously reject the Wise Woman title, your soul knows better. You have undergone your own metamorphosis, brought on by your own baby’s labor.  Watching a person you love in pain, is incredibly difficult, particularly if that person is your child, The same cellular connection that existed when you nursed your baby, or held her as her teenage heart broke into a million pieces, or swelled with pride as she stood up for right, still exists. That fierce protectiveness that infused your every move when she was an infant?  Still there.  When she was small, you would have done more than died for her if anything threatened her safety; you would have killed for her.  And it might come as a surprise to realize that you still would.

But here, in the labor room, hopefully lit by candles and love, there is nothing to defend against, nothing to fight.  Mama Bear has to go into hibernation.  Watching your daughter discovering her own strength, to see her feel her own sacredness, is a journey all its own.  Just as she must surrender to forces larger than herself, so must you surrender your desires and expectations.  She will find her way, and you have to do nothing but get out of her way.  And it is so so hard.

For many grandmothers, this is the most they have touched their daughters in many years. But in labor, in some ways, you can almost go back in time.  You can embrace your child again, without reservation, hold her physically again as she moans into your breast again, looking to you to make it all okay.  And while you can’t take away her physical sensations, you can imbue her with the courage and fortitude that is hers by womanly right.  It is as if she grows up all over again, in a compressed amount of time, right before your eyes.  She begins small and frightened, moves through uncertainty and doubt, and then in one instant, as her own child eases out of her body, her confidence and self trust shine through again.

Grandmothers then too are ready to take their new place in their family’s world.  For your daughter was not the only one who was birthed into another form of self that day.  Welcome to the world, Wise Woman!

 

Winding Down…–Jodilyn July 25, 2011

Filed under: Jodilyn,Vanuatu — EssentialMidwifery @ 12:03 am
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Thursday was humid and sweaty.  I felt like I was  moving through Jello and time was going soooo sloooow.  One of the midwives asked me, “Will today ever end?”  I don’t know what was going on unless they all felt the effects of the humidity as well or this is just one of those common workplace occurrences where everyone has slow-days.

We had several moms in early labor and lots of paper work to catch-up on.  We attacked the paper work, the tidying that never ends, making empty beds, mopping up…on and on.  I did a bunch of newborn exams and spent a lot of time hanging out with the twin’s family.  The dad was there to help get mom and the girls home and we chatted about their older son’s reaction to the babies and seeing mom and dad holding them.  Parenting is a universal challenge—we talked about Touchpoints (thank you Dr. Brazelton) and I shared some stories from when the kids were little.  Dad owns a tour company and they invited me to come and see “their little island” which reminded me of MamaMia : )

Of course everyone decided to have their baby at the same time—we had four mamas going within ten minutes of each other and they threw me into one to work with a student.  I had assessed this mother throughout the day and she would only let me touch her, telling the student and the other senior midwife who came in that she would have none of their fingers in her body.  Ok.  I actually wanted to support this student through it as she needs the hands-on.  At this point, strangely, I am feeling like I have done a lot of births and don’t need to do more.  (time to come home?!)  But I understood her position and respected it.  To make a very long story short she had a super tight fit and pushed for an hour and half, which is like 4 hours of pushing at home—it is unheard of.  She was bleeding ahead of the baby and complaining of acute pain.  We kept tabs on the mother in the bed across from her and they were having parallel experiences.  We prepared for both of them to have some serious bleeds and just asked the doctors to come hang out.  All the other babies were born first—3 girls.  This mother was insisting that she wanted a boy.  I slipped in once, “ok, it might be a girl too” and then held my peace—she would have to make hers or not make hers when the baby was born and I just decided I am wrong to interfere with her hopes and push reality on her when she is clearly a)not ready for that idea and b)in possession of 50% chance of getting what she wants.  The other mother had a high tear that required suturing by a physician and after baby was born so did this mom.  Baby was indeed a boy (!) and she asked me to go out and tell dad.  I went to tell him—he was a young 20 years old.  I asked him to come and see the babe but he wanted to know first what it was.  I told him it was a boy and he told me he actually knew that already so it was no surprise to him—he had had a very strong dream and had no doubts.  He made the transition from playing it cool to being uber excited quite rapidly and jumped up and snapped my finger—a trick the locals do which he later gave me detailed instructions in so I can show Jeffrey.  He wooted and hollered and danced around and clapped me on the back and kept saying, “alright!  alright!”

Friday I filled out and folded dozens of “blue cards” which are health records that parents use keep to track immunizations, well-child visits and any notes a provider would like to make mention of.  I also filled out and folded dozens of birth certificates.  So the next many many babies born in this hospital will have my signature on their birth certificate.  Which is kind of funny, considering I am not even a citizen here.  I am doing a lot of newborn exams as I have to pass my exam in the fall and have to match my scoring to the examiner’s scoring in order to be certified.

The weekend was all atwitter with building booths around the perimeter of the park for a week of celebration.  The booths are made by stripping the bark off of branches and then notching them at the ends so they fit together.  A whole frame is made in this way.  Ceilings and walls are made of woven leaves.  Each booth is about 10×5 or 10×7, depending on the use and they all share a wall with the one next to them.  Everyone was busy preparing, either with the weaving or the framing and then the moving.  That’s right, the moving.  Families move into these booths and use the front to sell goods—mostly food–and the rear to sleep in.  It is like a week-long Seafair from the old days when peons like us could pitch tents and actually enjoy themselves without spending a fortune.  All Sunday afternoon people were hauling pots, pans, sleeping mats and household goods down to the park.  Many of the houses are empty.  Chicken road is well represented with a few booths that are triple-wides in a row.  So now it is easy to visit my friends, I just go to their corner of the park and hang out.

Sunday at 3:00 began the festivities of Children’s Day with a parade led by the Big Chiefs from several islands, the minister of finance of Vanuatu, and several other dignitaries.  Behind them came the band and then the children and then the stragglers.  This parade does not work like our parades where everyone starts at the start and ends at the end.  This one started with the Chiefs and the band and a few children and they parade around the neighborhood and people wait on the street to see them and then join in at the end of the line so that by the end of the parade, when the procession marched onto the field there was a hodge-podge of people of all ages tagging along.  The prize has to go to my father-in-law’s counterpart here who ran around the corner from his house, got a big hat and stuck a Vanuatu flag in it and then waited for his grandkids to come down the street.  They clearly thought they had lost him and laughed and laughed at his prank.  He swooped up one of them and joined in the parade.  I happened to have been on the corner he ran to and he told me his joke while he got his hat situated.  Grandpa’s are da bomb.  I have been listening to so many stories lately and a lot of them are about grandfathers.  I will share one in a later post.

The parade entered the field and the Big Chiefs were called to do an opening ceremony, which is actually a ceremony once reserved for the start of wars between villages, and the singing sounded much  more war-like than happy-Children’s-Day-like.  They went to the middle of the field and exchanged Kava.  There were several chiefs present and they started to dance in a circle.  After a moment a group of grandmothers (I kid you not, some of them are great-grandmothers) ran to the center of the field and started dancing around the chiefs, much to the delight of the onlookers.  The chief from Pentecost saw them and stepped out of the chief’s circle and danced with the grandmothers instead.  This was extremely popular and there were loud cat-calls from the audience, who stood around the perimeter of the field.

Then came the speeches.  I had been warned.  But I’ll just say that I listened to about 6 of them over an hour and a half and then headed back to my room to call home and say happy birthday to Jeffrey and drink water.  I could hear them talking for another 2 hours so it was a good decision.  I had the chance to skype with Jane and I’m not sure what exactly happened but there was an extremely high rate of laughter and accusations leveled at each other regarding something to do with acting like 12-year olds.  Looking back, I’m not sure if 12 isn’t too mature.  Either way, just one more thing making me feel ready to come home.  I talked a long time with the kids and Benjy as well which was so great–also, making me feel ready to come home.  I am really happy to have these feelings.  I was kind of worried when I got here about how I would manage to get on a plane and leave.  Ever.

The partying went into the wee hours of the morning and this morning was the only morning since I have been here that the neighborhood was not awake with the sun.  I walked to the pool and it was still pretty quiet with the exception of a few toddlers who rose at the usual hour and teenagers who hadn’t gone to bed yet.  This will continue on for a week—even now there is a huge game of soccer going on the field and a live band playing music.  And it’s only 10:00am.

I am winding down my work hours as I want to see some more sights here before returning home and am frankly wanting fresh air.  All of the weeks in the hospital and the fumes from the cleaning agent still make my eyes water and set my gagger off.  I have caught a lot of babies.  I have delivered quite a few.  I feel confident about suturing, dystocias, breeches, twins, internal exams, and mothers with friable tissue.  But not so confident that I will ever approach birth without knowing that regardless of what I know, the mother knows more and the baby knows more and as a team they know best about how to birth and be born.

And not so confident that I would ever assume I could midwife better, just because I midwife differently than my colleagues, mentors, or peers.  This place has knocked the judgment out of me.  I hope that I can go on to support those in my profession with an open heart and genuine curiosity about who they are and how they arrive at decision points.

And certainly not so confident that I will ever stop learning or wanting to know more about why things unfold in the way that they do.  I am so lucky that the people I work with are information seekers and that they not only put up with my endless energy for getting to the bottom of things but they one-up me or encourage me or sit patiently with me as we talk these things out again and again so that we can all be better for the families we serve.

 

Where are the birth stories?–Jane July 19, 2011

Filed under: Jane,Uganda — EssentialMidwifery @ 10:36 pm
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Ha!  You noticed!  There aren’t any.  Yes, there was not a single baby born during our stay in Uganda.  However, I learned so much anyway.  It really put the focus on prenatal care, and teaching, which is something I really love, so please believe me when I say that the trip was not in any way disappointing.  Good prenatal care is really the foundation of all midwifery work.  It is not only about meeting mothers where they are, but really peeling back the layers of who she is as a person, and showing her how she is absolutely the best mother for her baby.  It is about showing mothers what they already know, and how they are the experts both on their pregnancy and on their particular baby.  And it’s about convincing other people that no matter who this mother is, whether she is a 15 year old singlemama, or a 35 year attorney , they deserve respect and honor.  And in this case, it was doing all of this in a language I do not speak.

Many many women come to these rural centers never intending to deliver there; in many cases they live too far from the center to reliably make it in time.  In others, the pressure to birth in their village is just too strong.  But they come to Shanti anyway, to learn, to share their pregnancy experience, and to be with other women. Remember, these women cannot just look up a symptom on the internet.  They do not have electricity or running water.  And they may not have their mothers or grandmothers around to ask all those questions that a new mother has.  There are 3,000,ooo orphans in Uganda, victims of a brutal civil war in the 80s and 90s, AIDS, or other diseases.  These women are having children now, and are starved for information and love.

Shanti also functions of a de facto medical clinic, dispensing malaria treatments, parasite eradication protocols, and other basic supportive health care needs to pregnant women.  That’s something I would never see in Seattle, and I’m grateful for the chance to deepen my knowledge.  There is also a huge emphasis on post baby family planning.  It is vital that Uganda get its over population problem under control, or the many strides it has made will be for naught.  Safe, reliable birth control has to have a huge place in Uganda’s future, and I was very pleased to see it taken so seriously at Shanti.  The average Ugandan family has 8 children.  The death rate, thank goodness, is dropping, but the birth rate remains the same.  Clearly this is not sustainable, and is a huge obstacle to the empowerment of Ugandan women.  Choosing to have many children, as some of my most delightful clients at home do, is very different from it being forced upon you by circumstance.  Again, choice, choice, choice.

Immersing oneself in another culture is always challenging.  I am asking a lot of the midwives at Shanti, to reevaluate what they have been taught to do, and what they have been doing effectively in their previous jobs. In turn, I am reevaluating my own methods and work, making sure that they still match up with who I am, and what I believe is my purpose in this world.  And really, that is one of the most important things we can do, as midwives, or just as  human beings.  We keep examining, keep searching for clues as to how to find our true place, and if we are really lucky, we meet others who can help us, like I have both here in Uganda and at home.

 

Waterbirth, Waterbirth, Waterbirth–Jane

Filed under: Uganda — EssentialMidwifery @ 8:21 pm
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At one point, almost 90% of the births I attended took place in the water.  It has dropped off a little, due to some speedy babies that wouldn’t wait for the tub to be filled, but there is just no denying that this is a very popular way to birth.  I was excited to hear Shanti’s take on it, and share what we have learned over the years.

They have a built in tub there, but it is really much too small and much too deep.  Its lovely, of course, as is everything there, but I’m afraid it just wouldn’t really work.  Luckily, Kristin, the coordinator, already knew that, so I wasn’t breaking anybody’s heart with that observation.  They assured me that they could just pull out all the tile and build another one, quite quickly.  (Now, I don’t want to judge, but “quite quickly?”  Well, we will see.)

I was asked to give a workshop on the down and dirty details of waterbirth, and I was delighted to.  It was so off the wall, so unheard of, that I actually think it could work out fine.  See, Shanti is fighting a battle with their midwives.  They have all been trained in the classic 1950′s Western model of birth.  Even getting them to acknowledge that there are better positions than McRoberts has been a bit of a challenge.  They begged me to ask Kristin to get rid of the large queen sized beds with the homemade quilts in the birthing room, and get them some real hospital beds.  They said the beds were too low, and were hurting their back.  (I can completely sympathize with that, of course)  However, when I gently asked if they could just climb up on the beds with their mamas, well, let’s just say my suggestion wasn’t met with overwhelming enthusiasm.  I did, after much roleplaying and coaxing get several of them to promise to at least try it.  So again,we will see.

And don’t even get me started on the episiotomy issue.  I’ve been reading Jodilyn’s struggle with this, and I can only nod vigorously.  They ladies love to cut.  (When they found out I had never ever done one, I think I actually lost some of their respect.  I had to make it up later by bringing chocolate to share.)

I think the main issue here is that out of hospital birth is not seen as a beautiful, candle lit experience, where the mother is surrounded by people of her choosing, and comes gracefully into her power as a woman.  No, here it is a dark and dirty affair, usually with no trained attendant,  the threat of hemorrhage, or other disasters lurking just over there in the corner.  The hospital is a place of (relative) safety, even though that little bit of increased safety comes at a huge moral price.  Shanti is trying to change that.  But its slow going, especially when you have to start with your staff.

But waterbirth?  They had hardly even heard of it, so they had no preconceived ideas.  And that, I have found, is one of the best places to start from a teaching standpoint.  We talked for hours, first dispelling the normal waterbirth questions that everybody from my mother to the guy in the supermarket have asked me.  No, the baby won’t drown.  No, you shouldn’t leave the baby underwater for a long time.  Yes, we tend to see less tears.  Yes, it IS hard to cut an episiotomy in the water.  How great of you to notice!) Etc etc.

Then, one of my favorite midwives asked the question:  “How do you run a resuscitation?”  And just like that, we were off, off in a completely juicy conversation regarding the physiology of delayed cord clamping, the unseen yet oh so powerful bond between a mother and her child, how the midwife’s own attitude and demeanor can influence outcomes, when to actively help and when to encourage from the sidelines…oh, it was wonderful!  We had almost no common ground to start with; they have not been trained in NRP in the same way that I have, so we really had to start from square one, because we really weren’t even talking about the same thing.  But once we defined our terms a bit, we were deeply engaged in one of those meaty philosophical discussions that all midwives love.  (It was a bit more difficult because of the language barrier, but we kept at it.)

By the end, they were excited about waterbirth, and I think, even a little bit eager to try it out.  Annet even wanted to skype me in on their first one, to help guide them.  I wonder how the mother will feel about that!  And I hope its not a long birth, because there is no electricity at the center.  But those are just details.  I’m sure we will work it out.  The point is that we are starting to give these mothers options, options that they have never even heard of before.  And with options comes choice, and with choice comes dignity.  And that is what all mothers deserve.

 

The Story Unfolds–Jodilyn July 17, 2011

Filed under: Jodilyn,Vanuatu — EssentialMidwifery @ 9:59 pm
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Yesterday was Sunday.  It has been raining and although I got myself all caked in mud on Friday in the name of going to market and getting out a bit, I stayed inside Saturday and had cabin fever by 5:30am Sunday morning.  The computer seemed like a trap I had no desire to lose my toes in so I decided to go to work.  I brought my umbrella to walk there.  It doesn’t rain for 10 or 15 feet and then the showers come on and frankly, they come on so fast and so hard that by the time my umbrella is up I am already drenched.  So I was mostly wet by the time I arrived but I passed one of my favorite midwives on her way home as I walked down the hill to the hospital.  She told me it was super busy and they will be happy to have my hands.

After that there is a giant blur but I will try to break it apart.  I walked in and put my backpack down in the lounge.  As I made my way to the board to see what was happening someone handed me a baby with directions to bathe and give it shots.  Oh Happy Work!!  I love love love floating these babies in warm water, watching as they unfold and look around and kick and relax.  Not to mention the baby cuddles which come in spades as I hold them in a towel to dry them off instead of rubbing their skin which I think must feel so sensitive in the first days after birth.  I brought baby to her mother and got them skin to skin, laying down in bed and then walked back to check the board which I had not managed to do.

“Jordilyrn!”  (every midwife here has their own version of my name, this I recognized as one of the senior midwives who walks with a limp but manages to lift mothers out of bed and scrub blood and muck out of sheets and do all of the hard labor involved in working here.)  I followed her voice to the delivery room and she told me she thought this mama was going fast.  She was opening the delivery kit and I looked at the mom, walked over to the counter and put on some gloves and turned around and caught the baby.  “Oh, you are going to do this delivery?”  She asked.  “Ummmm….you are welcome to but here is baby.”  A delighted laugh issued forth as she turned around again and saw baby already skin-to-skin with mom.  I offered to clean up and suture which she gratefully accepted.   I tidied up, sutured, and then got to scrubbing while the mother enjoyed her baby and her extended family came in to admire the new arrival.  I got mom to her bed, baby bathed and in bed with mom and then went to try again to look at the board and the charts.

The hallway was swarming with pregnant women.  They rub their own backs through contractions, reaching around and pushing up and down on their tailbones.  Sometimes their mothers or aunties or sister-in-laws will be there doing it for them and sometimes they will be sitting nearby chatting with the other mothers and aunties and sister-in laws.  Who is who?  I wonder about them.  I like to have my hands on a woman’s body before she births so I have an idea of her.  I want to know her name and what number child this is and if she tested positively or negatively for STDs.  I want to feel her belly and say hello to the baby.  I want to have a sense of her hygiene and some idea if her hemoglobin is beyond the low we think of as low.  I read through as many charts as I could but another page through the hallway, “Jordilyrn!”

I follow the call back to the delivery room where a young mother (and by young, I mean she is the exact age of my own daughter) is pacing back and forth, moaning.  I assume she is a first time mother because she is so young.  The midwife tells, me, “you stay with her.”  So I do.  I pick up her chart off the counter and see this is her second child.  The first was by cesarean section birth because the baby had been lying sideways in the belly.  OK, hooray!  A VBAC! I am really good at these.  I am smiling to myself and happy to be there.  I read the whole chart.  The doctor wants regular updates as to her progress and he wants her waters broken when the baby gets low enough.  OK, out of the range of things we would do to a VBAC but I am here on their turf.  I pause and watch her and start to think this through.  My rebellious VBAC self is screaming just to let her go and to have her baby before we call.  I rub her back and she wraps her lanky arm around my neck and strokes my shoulder.  She nuzzles her face into my neck and moans.  She is a child.  I feel her body, rubbing her hips and shoulders.  I look at her mother who is watching us and her daughter cries out to her, “Auwe Mommy!” I miss my girl.  Her mom is crying, watching her daughter like this.  She wipes her tears and shakes her head and comes to her daughter who launches herself from me to her mother.  She leans on her mother as I rub her back and talk in soothing soft words.  Telling her not to be afraid of what she is feeling.  Telling her she is safe and this is ok.

As her labor progresses I ask her if she wants me to check her.  She says she does.  I go and get my favorite nurse who acts as my translator.  She speaks softly to the moms and treats them gently.  I ask her to tell the mom that if the baby is low enough we can break her water, which will make her labor more intense.  I want to know if she wants me to do this or if she prefers not.  She wants me to if I can so I prepare ahead of the exam and confirm the plan with the head midwife.  I feel the baby, so low into the pelvis, and a bulging bag of waters ahead of it.  I snag the bag gently and it opens.  But the give of the bag was too easy and I felt it pull apart and rip down.  I listen to the baby as I think about what I felt.  Baby is doing great.  When I think about things not being as robust as I would expect them to feel or be here, I wonder right away about nutrition.  I ask the mom if she eats fish, chicken, beef, or ham.  No.  She eats island cabbage and white rice for dinner.  I park that in the back of my mind.  I tell the head midwife that she is nearly complete but since it is the first time she is pushing a baby out it could be a while. I don’t want the doctor cranky with me for calling too soon.

I walk back into the room and she is pushing.  I trot back out and say, “Nevermind.  She is pushing.  Calling Dr. B.”  The midwife comes into the room as the first of the head is showing with strict directions from the doctor to call if she has not delivered within an hour.  I ask her to stay.  I don’t feel good about friable tissue.  I see the telltale sign of bleeding from behind the baby.  I know what this is now, after having seen it so many times and know that she will be shredded on the inside and I want a witness to see that I did not do it to her by not cutting an episiotomy and that I have followed the doctor’s orders.  The midwife even remarked that she must be tearing on the inside.  Baby is born with three pushes, it is a beautiful wonderful birth.  And then the bleeding starts.  It is not pulsing, just gushing.  I feel for the uterus and can’t find it.  I make a map of her belly and start my search in quadrants.  I finally locate it but it is too low down.  Something is really really not right.  I rub and rub and it finally hardens beneath my hands.

I ask the midwife to start an IV and give her fluids and synto.  She gets it up fast.  We can’t run IVs as fast as mom is bleeding.  I take gauze and go in hard, looking for the source of the bleeding, thinking that if I can compress the tear it will stop.  It hurts mom.  I tell her I’m sorry and to take deep breaths.  I see one big tear, and what looks like the uterus, or the front of the uterus, or some other organ.  There is blood everywhere and it is hard to see but I know my landmarks and that is not one.  I start packing gauze into every tear I can find.  I am screaming in my head, “Protein!”  I know this is not the time to be thinking about nutrition and that I should be screaming other things in my head.  But I am frustrated with these women falling apart.  The doctor comes in and he is friendly and kind.  Blood is pouring over the gauze I have packed in her.  I am trying to convince her uterus to stay firm and I say outloud, “I would really like this uterus to stay firm.  Mama:  talk to your uterus, tell it to get hard.  Talk to your body.  Tell it to stop bleeding.”  It sounds bananas but this really does help when we do it at home.

I am dumping a bowl-full of blood out and putting the bowl back again.  And again.  I give the doctor the summary.  What has happened.  What I’ve felt.  What I’ve seen.  He takes my position and asks for a speculum.  I do not waste time removing my gloves and my bloody hands open the door and get out the kit he needs.  He confirms that the lower segment of the uterus has come down, he can see the rectum.  Everything is in the wrong place.  The one thing I know about this is that we can get it back up where it goes.  Sure enough he pushes the uterus back up and I can see it rolling up her belly.  I lock my hand in place on her belly to hold it there from the outside.  I massage it with my other hand.  It won’t stay hard despite the massive quantities of syntocin going into her through IV.  We place a second IV and draw blood to cross and match it, then hook her up to more fluids.  The doctor meanwhile is busy trying to find an apex to one of the tears so he can start suturing.  He eventually does it by feel.

He worked for 45 minutes with myself and another doctor assisting him.  She was bleeding the whole time.

He cleans up the best he can—the room is a flood of blood and looks like a hurricane has hit it as we tore open supplies and cracked bottles of medicine and fluids.  I am eager to clean up, I know it will feel soothing.  I ask for instructions from him—how often to do vitals (I did them twice as often), how much fluid to give, when to call him back.  I made a chart to record everything and put in consults to him once every 45 minutes for the first three hours.  He leaves and she has the shakes.  I chase him down and ask him how he feels about that.  He tells me to put some blankets on her and watch her vitals.  I do.  Her blood pressure tanks.   I get the senior midwife back again and she tells me to load on a plasma replacement gel and she will call the doctor and tell him that he wants us to do that.  I love that woman.  He tells us to load her with two doses of gel and keep running fluids until her pressure normalizes.  She has no urine output despite the now 4000 units of fluid we have put in.

I spent four hours with her, scrubbing the room to a shine while taking her pulse and temperature and blood pressure.  The grand-mother had taken the baby out to be with family.  I realized she needed a family member with her so I went to find her mom.  I saw her boyfriend there and I changed tactics.  I asked if he would come see her.  He too is just a teenager and he was scared witless.  I told him just to come talk with her.  She was in a sleep when we got to the room so I woke her and told her to say hello…I would later tell the doctor that this young man was the best medicine we gave her all day long.  I watched him step over his fear to be with her and encourage her.  She was shaking and pale and he spoke gently to her.  He looked up at me and said, “I think she is hungry.”  Teenagers are magnificent, capable, wonderful creatures.  I know they are busy finding out who they are but the sensitivity and depth of empathy they display when the chips are down are palpable.

I sent him to go get her some food and he returned with the source of her friable tissue….orange soda and white bread.  Frankly, I thought the sugar would do her good so did not object but made my way to the mom to ask her to go and get some milk.  She slowly ate and the combination of his company, the fluids, the food, and time seemed to be bringing her some strength.  At the end of the fourth hour her blood pressure looked pretty darn good and there was urine output again.

For my birthy people, don’t think I haven’t wondered if I had ignored orders and not broken her water if she would have shredded.  All I can offer up is past experiences here which tell me it did not make a difference whether the water was neatly emptied on a midwife’s schedule or came flying out all over me—this is so far beyond what we know of in America.  Poor nutrition here is not fast food and snickers bars.  It is a lifetime of orange soda, white bread, fried leafy greens and white rice.  No protein.   An entire lifetime of it.

It was already two hours past the end of the shift but the senior midwife had stayed with me to see this mom through.  I learned from this mother.  At home I always tell laboring moms who are having a long labor that they and the baby each have a story to tell and a journey to make, and we will understand it very clearly when it is all over, but cannot know it before then.  So too for the midwife.  The labor will tell its own story.  If I assume that each moment is the story I will be mired in parts instead of learning from the whole.  She was dying.  Then she was not.  And she did not.  And I worked hard and sweated and used everything I had available to me, including a consult to a very good physician to make it so.   We moved her to a postpartum room close to the midwives’ desk and got her settled with her baby, who forgave her the hours she had been away and eagerly looked at her and nursed well.

As I was dragging myself toward my backpack and home, I heard it again.  “Jordilyrn!”

I took a breath.  Really?  “Can you just check one mom before you go?”  Of course I can.  I brought mom into the admissions room.  A fourth time mom.  A posterior cervix.  No bleeding, no broken waters.  Hardly a contraction to speak of.  I saw Dr. B in the hall and asked him to come translate as she had no English.  “Can you ask her if she has any concerns?  I am wondering why she is here so early in labor if it is her 4th—she must feel something is happening.”  He skips my version and asks her all of the questions I already know how to ask and he tells me she should just go home.  She lives nearby and can come back later in more active labor.  Now a fourth time mother usually has a reason for calling a provider or showing up to a maternity ward.  I put her on the CTG to get a read on baby and contractions, just making sure everyone looked good before sending her home.  They looked stellar.  After 10 minutes I unpluged the machine from her and told her she could go home, or walk-about around here, or go into town with her sister for a girls night out…the choice was hers.  I helped her sit up.  She stood and there was a puddle of water.  I looked at her.  Her face had changed.  She was sweating and looking at me like I might  have the missing piece to a puzzle she has been working on for years.  “OK”  I say, “let’s go—right there”  I was pointing to the delivery room.  She is nodding slightly and making small deep questioning Scooby-doo-like noises.  “huhhhhh?”

I would like to pause to thank the two women I have been with as a doula who had posterior cervixes hardly dilated, followed by two contractions, followed by a baby.  Thank you.  I recognized in her what I was privileged enough to see in you.  I remember the nurses yammering on and on about how you couldn’t possibly be in labor, about how it will be several hours…I resolved not to be that person.

Mom took two steps up the stool to the bed and lay down.  I put on some gloves and turned around. I placed my hand gently on moms belly.  “Ok baby, today is your day.  Now is your moment.  Come to us gently and kiss your mama who has taken such good care of you.”  Mom smiled and pushed her baby out slowly.  A lovely pink healthy girl.  She did not cry.  She just lifted her head from mom’s chest and looked around.  “Welcome, welcome” I hum.  Mom was smiling dreamily from the baby to me and back again.  Auntywas laughing and crying.  I was waiting for the hemorrhage but it did not come.  I know how to do this birth.  I relax and smile and am thankful.  So thankful.  I feel the cord pulsing.  It pulsed for 19 minutes.  Aunty cut the cord.  Placenta came easily.  Hardly any bleeding.  “Surprise!” I say, laughing.  “Happy, Happy Birthday Baby…I’m so happy you are here ” I talk to the baby as I check to see if the cord has three vessels, if she is really as healthy and strong as I think she is.   Mom names her Jodilyn on the spot.  I can’t refuse.  I’m too happy.

 

Teaching a Birth–Jodilyn July 15, 2011

Filed under: Jodilyn,Vanuatu — EssentialMidwifery @ 4:33 am
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Firstly, my world feels right again now that I see Jane online : )  I am taking this afternoon to read her blog entries and cannot wait to devour them.

This week felt like it was acutely about teaching, with some wonderful and challenging births and delicious babies as the centerpieces for the lessons.  We got a whole new crew of students in.  They are medical, midwifery and nursing students from Australia.  We also got a fresh crew of local nursing students coming through and I have been really working with them as much as possible.  Many of the nurses here start nursing school in grade 11 so they tend to be about 17 years old, although there are some older ones as well.  They have no allowance while in school beyond what their families can afford so it can be quite challenging and I have heard the most inspiring personal stories from them.  One single mom who worked at the supermarket and scrimped and saved and now owns a small plot of land of her own and is in school full time, another who is a father of three that live 45 miles away from the hospital and he could not afford the bus fair (about $5 a day) to and from school and home so he stayed with some family of his that live locally for the first year of school.  The problem was that they had so many extended family members living with them there was no room to sleep on the floor so he slept every night upright in a chair so that he could stay here and keep going to school.  AussieAide provided the nursing school with scholarship funds—half to be given out on merit and half on need and he was the recipient of one of the scholarships so now will finish school with a place to sleep.  The stories go on and on of these young people getting themselves educated and contributing to their communities.  Most of them will go to school for 3 years and then work supervised for 2 years and then become the primary care providers in rural settings, so they need to know how to do everything and do it well.  I have tried to attach two of them to me, constantly teaching them and putting their hands on moms and babies—the New Zealand midwife here keeps them busy with meaningful projects and they are responsible for helping to clean and make the beds and assist in other duties in the nursery.  I don’t know how they do it.  I suppose it helps that they are young and excited about their work!

Yesterday we had a first time mom who kind of acted like an American mother—I was so surprised.  She threw up in labor and hollered and even whined.  I said, “oh, it feels like home…” mind you I said it with a big smile on my face.  It is a new skill I have developed out of necessity to read the cultural cues here and it can be hard understanding where someone is at from watching them when they act like they are taking a stroll through the mall and don’t really make much of a fuss until it is time to push.  At home I can almost always tell just by watching and listening how far along a mother is.

So one mama who was all out there with her labor was kind of fun.  Normally I wait to see a head to write down that someone is fully dilated instead of checking and checking them.  But she flew through her labor and had been checked a couple of times by other midwives.  She felt like pushing and got up on the bed.  I had been told to do an exam and then have the student do one so she could feel what a fully dilated cervix feels like.  I did and felt a tight anterior lip (just some cervix along one side).  I had the crew of aussie students standing at the back of the room watching and this nursing student there with me by the mother.  So I talked about what I was feeling and had the student feel.  Then I talked about using position changes such as hands and knees and asked the student to tell mom that if she would get on her hands and knees it makes more room for baby to do its work and might take away the urge to push she was feeling.  The baby was super low.  Much to my surprise she flipped right over.  I can’t count the times I have asked moms to do this and they refuse—and look at me like I am idiot.  They think it is acting like a dog and won’t have any part of it.  I covered her with a blanket so she would not feel exposed and asked the NZ midwife to come in and do some acupressure.  We did four contractions like that and then the mom, with a roar, flopped down on her side.

The NZ midwife did an exam and lifted the baby back out of the pelvis to try to get the pressure of mom’s bottom so she wouldn’t need to push as there was still some cervix left.  I asked for one more round on her hands and knees which she did.  She was screaming and moaning like the best of them—rocking her hips and grabbing onto her mother for dear life.  I was quietly talking to the medical students—telling them this was all good and healthy and we are just watching her come into her power and birth is hard, hard work.   The NZ midwife asked me to check again and I did, and I will share that she felt very very tight internally.  And I said outloud, “that feels tight”.  And then I looked up at all of the students watching me and the NZ midwife watching me and I just kept talking out loud, getting my thoughts out there.  “Here’s the problem with internal exams.  We get judgmental.  I don’t know what this baby is going to do to find his way here.  I am feeling her and thinking, ‘this is too tight’.   But it won’t be, because it rarely ever is.  Babies are born.  Mamas birth.  I just know too much about her body now because we have checked her too much.  If I never checked her, all I would be doing is using position changes to shift the diameter of pelvis to help that head get applied correctly.”  To which the NZ midwife replied, “Right-O”.

The mom was switching positions on her own now, sometimes on her side with her foot in my ribs.  Sometimes on her back arching and lifting her bottom.  Sometimes on her hands and knees and once she got into yoga’s Child Pose.  And then there was grunting and pushing.  And the tip of baby’s head.  “Hello, Baby!” I said.  Mama locked eyes with me, I smiled and gave her a big “Good on you!  You are doing it!”.  I placed her hand on that small strip of baby’s head.   She jammed her foot onto my shoulder and brought the head out.  Baby restituted.  “Thank you baby” (I said to baby).  “See how this baby is finding his way out, turning to birth its own shoulder with the next contraction” (I said to students) “ooooooooooh” (said the peanut gallery).  “There’s a cord around the neck!” (alarm from a med student)  I felt it.  Plenty of slack but not enough to slip over the head.  “First I am feeling if it will easily slip over the head…I am not worried, the neck is the safest place to park the cord for birth so I just think to myself, ‘here is one smart baby parking its cord in this nice protected cove of a neck’.  And it has good slack but I can’t slip it over so we will somersault it out”  The next contraction, “Just one small push now mama”.  And she does.  And I say quietly “somersault, somersault, and….somersault” as I support the baby through the loop of its cord and out of it again, the natural movements it would make with or without me there to help.

And swish….up to mama’s chest, ear on the heart.  A baby in its new habitat, the one place that is designed to nurture, calm, and regulate it best:  skin-to-skin, belly to belly, ear to heart with mama.  Baby gives a cry and looks around.  Students are clapping.  Grandma is crying.  Mama is over the moon, gazing up and away with her hands on her baby and a smile that would put the best Orbit Gum commercial to shame.  There is no time for me to exhale as a spurt and gush of blood pour forth from mother and I am on again.  “ok now I just look up at the clock and see the second hand—it is on the 35”  I am feeling the uterus, rubbing it to make sure it is hard…it is.  I take the student’s hand and place it on the organ, which feels like a grapefruit.  “If this stops shortly than it is the placenta working its way apart from the uterus”  If it is still going when we get to the 5 I will deal with that then.  15 seconds go by and the flood stops just. like. that.  “Oh, this is just lovely…it is the placenta”.  I tell one of the onlookers to grab some gloves and he can help me with the placenta when it is time.  We feel the cord pulsing and talk about letting the baby reach homeostasis by waiting until it quits.   We feel it quit slowly, from the bottom, working its way up to the baby’s umbilicus.

There are stars in the eyes of some of the students…I wonder I this is transformative for them and if so, which part?  Is it the birth or is it this mother or is it seeing all of the intricate details from a provider’s perspective that is speaking to them?  Or something I can’t guess at perhaps.

The cord is done pulsing.  I ask the mother if it is ok if we separate baby from its placenta now.  She nods yes.  I clamp and milk the cord about two inches down and clamp again.  I give the scissors to grandma.  She looks at me in shock and amazement but takes them.  I tell her to go in strong, and she does.  And it still takes two tries to cut that miraculous tether which feeds life from one to the other.  She is crying again and kissing her daughter all over her face…a thousand mama-kisses for her child and this incredible gift she has brought into their family.

I wrap the cord around the clamp and motion the med student over.  He looks like any one of Julia’s friends…lanky and still a boy but trying out the world in new ways.  I tell him to put his hand over mine, talk about guarding the uterus, the path the placenta has to travel to get to us.  We ask the mother for one last small push and the placenta comes nicely out.  I inspect it, I talk about what I am seeing and looking for and how to find it.  I show the mom and grandma.  They are stunned and excited to see the house where baby lived.  I go and put it in the sink and encourage the students to put on gloves and feel it, and run their fingers along the membranes so they will see how strong that sack is and to keep their questions in their minds, we will talk after we are done and in another room.

I check the mother for tears, and she has one well placed tear.  I confirm the apex with another midwife and then suture her.  It worked really well.  I am pleased as punch that I did that.  But I am also so new to suturing that I never believe it works when I do it.  More on that in a bit.

I see the door popping open in bits and look.  It is the new mother’s father, anxious to see that his daughter is ok, surprised by the sight of his new grandson in her arms.  I coax him in so that he can see them.  His response is an echo of his wife’s as he holds his heart and plants a big kiss on his daughter’s forehead and then a small one on the new boy.  Whispers rush fort from his mouth to the baby’s ear.  A loving welcome to this world indeed, a new life celebrated with gratitude and affection.  I feel lucky, lucky, lucky.  I am witnessing love.

I kept a close eye on mom for the whole day, sure that she would bleed to death because I did not suture her correctly.  Knowing intellectually that I did does not help.  She is 18.  She has rebounded 2 hours after the birth and is up walking around.  I am behind her at every turn.  Waiting for her to pass out in a good southern faint with her hand to her forehead and a big Scarlett O’hara sigh.  She wants to shower.  I can’t believe my eyes.  She is just up and walking about.  My doctor friend asks me, “why are you following her like that?”.  I tell her the truth.  “Because I sutured her and I must have done it wrong so she is going to bleed to death”.  She looks me in the eye and sing-song says to me, “Jodilyn, come now.  She is fine.  You did alright.  You are alright”.  Oh.   OK.  I’m alright.  She is fine.  I believe my friend and wait for what I know is coming next… “however, if you noticed with this primip that she tore and did not tear so straight and if you had just cut an epis[iotomy] you would not even wonder about these things”.  Nope. Nope. Nope.  I shake my head at her and smile and go to meet the next mother.

 

Pigs and Bats June 27, 2011

Filed under: Jodilyn,Vanuatu — EssentialMidwifery @ 12:27 am
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Just a quick note to tell you that Sunday morning started out with me getting chased by a pig on the way to the pool (enter the usual rescue heroes an old lady with no teeth and an umbrella to beat him back and masses of small boys under six with pebbles and pig-wrestling skills).  For the record it was a Giant Pig and not the cute pink kind with the curly tail.  We looked eye-to-eye and after he added some snorting and grunting to the posturing I decided he could win and bolted.

The midwife here from New Zealand and her husband took us American girls on a round-the-island tour where we sampled coffee from Tanna, saw black sand beaches, and stood in the roaring wind with our feet in the warm turquoise waters of the south pacific.  The weather was stormy but we had a great day.  I shouldn’t forget to mention the one beach we stopped at where some locals had trapped some bats (which I think they call flying foxes) and were prepping them for a good ole fashion BBQ.  The other American midwife and I were making gagging gestures—I believe at one point she said she would rather eat a locust than one of those bats—while they explained how they grill ‘em up.  Apparantly the armpit is quite succulent we were told, while he spread the wings out to show us.  These creatures look like squirrels with bad-ass teeth and leather wings.  They should be the mascot for a biker gang.   I really can’t go on about it, it is making me a bit queasy.  We ended the day with an outdoor movie down at the NumbaWan Café where they string up a screen just in front of the ocean and use a projector with DVD to show the movie.  It was quite fun and I discovered that they do have ice cream here but it doesn’t taste at all like ours.  There is finally sun again after a week of squalls and rain, though it is entirely blustery, which I am just trying to enjoy as the humidity has been blown away for now.

And for the record, when I went this morning to swim the pig had been thoroughly detained in the back of the property again so I called him a name and walked slowly by.

 

 
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