Mercy Alumni Monthly Sustainers Fellowship

Dear Friends,

We love to celebrate the ways that our Alumni continue to make a difference in the world of midwifery.  Our alumna, Jamie Dellesky, works for Mercy in Action College of Midwifery and also heads up our Diploma Program.  She and her young family spent time in the Philippines with our midwives many years ago.  This summer she has traveled to the Philippines to teach the life-saving Helping Mothers Survive Bleeding After Birth and Helping Babies Breathe workshops to new midwives, as well as a very important workshop about Labor Comfort Companions in Labor.

The Labor Comfort Companions workshop was a perfect complement to go with the courses on Helping Mothers and Babies Survive Jamie had just taught. Dozens of midwives from many different birth facilities, including the head of our local midwifery college, attended. Most other area birthing facilities do not allow the mother to have any companions at all for labor and delivery or immediate postpartum, and most midwives are never taught to do comfort measures or pain relief techniques in their training.

Jamie writes this: “In many places around the world, laboring mothers are not allowed to have a companion with her while she gives birth. I have taken on the task of trying to improve maternal/newborn outcomes by teaching about how important it is for a mother to have her partner in the labor room with her. In teaching this, I am also teaching healthcare workers how important it is to know and use comfort measures, kindness, and comfort to help a laboring and birthing mother.  There are years of compelling evidence that shows having a comfort companion or a healthcare worker who is trained in helping the laboring mother feel safe, give her comfort techniques to deal and cope with the natural pain of labor, actually produces better outcomes for both the mother and the baby. The fact is that fear stops labor. A woman having her partner or a companion of her choice helps her have a healthy, normal labor and birth.”

Labor companions and comfort measures may not be the kind of thing people first think of when thinking of what is needed to change the tide of the maternal/newborn crisis we have around the globe, but as alumni of Mercy In Action, you know that prevention is key, as are emergency skills to deal with a postpartum hemorrhage, understanding neonatal breathing problems at birth, and so on.  But what is often neglected in much of the world is both sides of this equation: understanding how we can prevent complications from happening in the first place, AND being prepared to respond to birth emergencies when they happen. 

Jamie taught local area midwives, nurses and doctors that we can start by having the skills of comfort, kindness, and making the woman feel secure, along with allowing her companion, who loves and cares for her, in the labor and birth room, and that is helping prevent complications. And we also must be skilled in how to respond to complications with updated best practices; both are necessary for us to achieve better outcomes for both the baby and the mother. 

Jamie ended her month in the Philippines teaching the local hospital how to use the NASG we donated to them. We are so proud of her achievements!

As alumni of Mercy in Action, I can imagine your heart leaped with the possibility of improving outcomes when reading this report. Let us know what you are doing; we would love to feature your outreaches in a future report; you can write to info@mercyinaction.edu.

Your faithful giving to this project makes this good work possible. THANK YOU! 

Kindly, 

Jenny Fox, for the Mercy in Action Team

Links:

• Mercy in Action Diploma Program