Support Kaqchikel midwives in Guatemala

The Golden Minute is an extremely important 60 second window to make sure an infant is breathing his or her first breaths of air and to check to see if the infant is not in any distress. This is an extremely important and can be nervewraking if a medical professional is not trained for the sitaution. 

In rural Guatemala, the majority of women are not able to go to a hospital to give birth or many women prefer to stay at home and have a midwife. The majority of midwives are well trained and have a great deal of experience. They are often viewed as leaders in the community and provide new information and resources to their patients and other women in the community. 

For over 7 years we have been collaborating with midwives in Guatemala and we have implemented several successful projects, including a continuing education program and curriculum, to teach practicing lay midwives about new themes in midwifery and to reinforce key skills, such as neonatal resuscitation; and community outreach programs to improve management of high risk pregnancies and newborn infants in rural outlying communities. We provide ongoing training to midwives who have been with us for many years and we are always open to training new midwives.

Recently, we provided training in neonatal resuscitation for 90 midwives and 30 of them who had never received the training before! It was a fun 3 days as we gathered together in different communities to spend 5 hours discussing the importance of the golden minute and how to do it, and then practivcing the life saving techniques. After each training we gathered together for lunch. We shared laughs and stories over chicken soup with delicious corn tortillas. 

Since August, we have had the great fortune of having Nora, a 2013-2014 Fulbright Fellow, work with us. Nora is a fourth-year medical student at Mayo Medical School in Minnesota, and she will be with us through June 2014. Her focus is to build capacity for data collection and training with our midwives. When Nora arrived, she immediately began to learn Kaqchikel. Since then she has been working closely with the midwives to complete an evaluation of the midwives training curriculum, which is unique because of its respect for Mayan values—among other things, it is one of the country’s only traditional midwife training program conducted exclusively in an indigenous language.

After several months in Guatemala, Nora has gained a better understanding of the midwives’ work and role in their communities and she is currently working with them on their program’s efficacy and acceptability, to set the stage for future internal evaluation.

Below is a Field Report from Nora

Yesterday, I met up with Elvia, one of the lead midwives, and we went to a larger outlying community or aldea about half an hour away. 

In the aldea, we met up with Romina, an elderly and smile-filled midwife. She speaks mostly Kaqchikel, so we were able to chat a little and work on my Kaqchikel. We saw four patients in their homes, spending nearly an hour with each. I mostly observed and listened to the rapid-fire, real-world Kaqchikel. 

At one point, we saw a patient whose baby was in transverse lie (which likely won’t be a problem, since she was only about 32 weeks along). I asked Romina for the word for transverse lie in Kaqchikel. 

“Kotz’ol,” she said, which literally means lying down. Logical!

“Chuqa’ ke ri’?” I asked, motioning breech position

“Tzuyül!” she smliled, which means sitting. Also logical!

“Chuqa’ wi rujolom wawe?” I motioned vertex.

“Ütz!”–which is simply “good!”

Looking forward to another day. 

Links:

• Learn more at our website