A Conference for the Medical Community on Breastfeeding
I knew it was an important event because the women in the kitchen killed six chickens for the lunch and offered to iron my clothes. We moved all the beds and slowly turned the postpartum room into a conference room, set up every chair we could fine and then with a prayer and a song, began the conference on breastfeeding in North Haiti.When I had first thought of working in Haiti, I had thought most of all about the births and did not understand how much I would be called to attend to the problem of under five deaths in Haiti and the world. You see, each year, nine million children under the age of five, die throughout the world. I have shared with you some of my experiences with malnutrition and the death of young children and I hope I have shared my optomism that this can be helped by the protection and promotion of breastfeeding.
The conference was attended by doctors, nurses, midwives and traditional birth attendents with no way to distinguish one from the other. I opened the conference by giving everyone a gold ribbon tied into a bow to wear. This is the symbol UNICEF and the World Health Organization chose to represent the call for increased breastfeeding world wide as a key strategy in reducing under five deaths.
One bow is for the mom and one for the baby. The knot represents the community/family/father whose support makes breastfeeding possible. One ribbon stands for six months of exclusive breastfeeding and two years with appropriate supplemental foods. The other ribbon stands for the spacing of children three years apart to ensure good nutrition and health for both the mother and children.
It had been my goal to host such a conference for the medical community and I set out to make sure I did this before my time in Haiti came to a close. It was little overwhelming and a bit scarey but days such as these unfold as they will. The presentations were professional and well thought out. The audience was appreciative and eager. The food was magnificent. People left smiling and hopeful.
In time, the beds returned to the postpartum room and the moms with their starving babies, infections, superstitions and fears fill them. And I, take a deep breath and begin again confident that this Monday morning there are many more voices in Haiti carrying this message forward. My thanks to everyone who came and presented and to all the wonderful women who fixed food with so much love and grace and for the medical community of Haiti who found their way to our gate. On many days, life is better than our wildest dreams and expectations.
We ended the day with a walk up the mountain to the place where people gather to sing and pray and watch the sunset over the bay. The young boys, of the village, give each other bucket showers and later use the buckets for drums. I walk back to the place that has been my home here in Haiti, tired but grateful.
-Midwife Sara in Haiti
The face of statistics
Haiti by the numbers
Less than 45% of the population has clean water – 74 babies die per 1000 births – 12% of all babies die before their first birthday – one third of all children die before their fifth birthday – one in 71 women will die in pregnancy or childbirth – half the population earns less than $60 a year –
5.6% of the population is infected with HIV including 19,000 children – the average life expectancy is 53 – 163,000 children are estimated to have been left orphaned by HIVIn Haiti these numbers have come to life in the faces and stories of the people I meet. It is no longer one in seventy one women who die but rather a woman I knew and touched and heard her family cry. It is no longer 74 babies in 1000 but a baby whose heart beat I looked for and could never find. It is no longer 12% of all children under one who die, but special babies I have weighed and fed and held as they sleep. It is no longer mothers with HIV but the mother who lies about her testing so I’ll do her birth. It is no longer 163,000 orphans but the many men and women I have met who grew up orphaned and alone.
In this way the statistics turned to stories and the facts became the faces. The percentages turned to possibility and the thousands turned to one.
- Midwife Sarah in Haiti
- 10 November 2011
- Posted by MamaBaby Haiti
- Category: Blog
- 2 Comments
The local Matwans come for a visit
November 4th, 2011
Last Saturday, twenty-five local matwans came to spend the morning here at MamaBaby Haiti. I was nervous, that they would not come and worried that I would not be able to create the sense of welcome that was so important to me.
But at 9:30 the first two knocked on our gate and more kept arriving all morning. Here you can see them having good fun with a model of a baby and pelvis. They are demonstrating how to deliver a breech baby.
We enjoyed a wonderful morning of friendship and common interests; laughter and many stories as well as our concerns about access to care and supplies. They signed up for a class in “Helping Babies Breathe” and agreed to meet once a month. We explained that our hope was that it be their meeting with us providing the space, speakers and resources based on their needs. They talked long amongst themselves while we prepared sandwiches and clean birth kits for them to take home.
I am told that 78% of all babies are delivered by these strong women; many of whom came to be midwives through a powerful dream. They are smart, loving community leaders who work for almost no pay and with few resources.
They work without the ability to read and write because no one ever taught them. We have resource books everywhere here. We look in them night and day and use the internet for what we can not find in books. The literacy rate of any country can not help but be deeply tied to its healthcare. It is my hope that the next generation of Hatien midwives will retain the love of community these midwives have, with an ability to read, , study so that they can have access to the resources necessary for safe motherhood. I know these midwives are forever sad thar they can not read and write and I share their sadness with them.
One midwife told us she also helped farmers with a difficult delivery of a baby calf as I think midwives do the world over. I told her I would teach her what I know about birthing babies if she would teach me to birth a calf and we all had a good laugh.
We offered them an opportunity to spend a week here in a “mini residency” where we can easily share practices and get to know one another better.
They came in good dresses with hats; looking exactly as my grandmother would have thought ladies who come to visit other ladies should dress. We could not match them for style or grace but hope they felt our sincere desire to be partners with them in caring for Haiti’s mothers and babies.
Midwife Sarah in Haiti
Give Thanks and Run Fundraiser
Click here to sign up for the Give Thanks and Run Fundraiser
Come join MamaBaby Haiti for our Give Thanks & Run Fundraiser Saturday, November 19th, at 9am at Newberg High School
Come join MamaBaby Haiti for our Give Thanks & Run Fundraiser (walkers welcome as well!). We will have a 5K run, 10K run, and Kids Fun Run. We will have the Kids Fun Run and the finish line on the Newberg High School track (the 5K and 10K will not be on the track).
When: Saturday, November 19th, at 9am
Where: Newberg High School, 2400 Douglas Avenue, Newberg, Oregon (at the football field & track)
Who: Bring friends, family, children
Online registration fees:
Adult registration fee: $15
Children 12 and under fee: $5
Family registration fee: $40
Registration deadline November 15th at 11:pm. Late registration is an additional $10 per person, $20 per family. Please arrive by 8:30am.
- If you would like a shirt that has the MamaBaby Haiti logo and says “I ran for their lives” please add $15 to your registration and specify size (children’s shirts available as well).
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, three midwives from Yamhill County traveled to Haiti to serve the people and make a difference. They worked in the hospitals in desperate conditions, with no water, no medical supplies, not enough beds, not enough midwives or doctors. Their hearts were touched in so many ways. They fell in love with the people of Haiti and vowed to make a change. The maternal, fetal, and neonatal death rate in Haiti is the highest in the western hemisphere. MamaBaby Haiti was opened in November 2010 by these midwives and their husbands. They opened, staff and maintain a birth center and health clinic in Northern Haiti. MamaBaby Haiti serves as a safe and clean place for women and their families to come for free quality health care from midwives and doctors.
In the year we’ve been open, our doctors have seen thousands of sick and needy patients. The need for care is so great in our area and the surrounding villages, that our birth center is attending 200 births monthly and doing prenatal care for approximately 600 women per month. We also are teaching nutrition, hygiene, breastfeeding, and baby care to hundreds of families, providing iron to combat anemia, and treating moms and children for parasites. A new service that we have recently been able to provide is free birth control to mothers so that they can space their pregnancies. Pregnancy spacing for a malnourished population improves mother and child health, and reduces the number of children orphaned due to birth complications. The MBH board and clinic staff are very excited to be making a lasting difference by also educating and training Haitian women to be caring and experienced midwives in their communities.
Visit us at www.mamababyhaiti.org to find out more about what we do to alleviate the suffering of the poorest of the poor.
