By Jim Grant | Executive Director
Midwives at MN must have patience, perseverance, courage, a positive outlook, and most importantly, in addition to their medical skills, they must be able to convey a sense of security and calm to women usused to visiting centers for 'institutional' care, where they can feel overwhelmed and stressed.
Imagine growing up in a remote village without electricity, running water, or sometimes even a road! Your home is built of sticks and thatch, with a dirt floor. The nearest professional medical care can be many miles away, by motobike if you are lucky, but usually by horse, donkey, or on foot. Now imagine that you are ready to deliver a baby, and have never been outside of your immediate community - never seen or visited a hospital, doctor, or even a nurse, but you know that it is important to have an attended delivery for the safety of your baby. You feel intimidated by all of the people and equipment, which is mysterios and a bit frightening. You are poor, and feel out of place in this modern environment. It is a critical part of every midwife's job to make all mothers feel welcome and comfortable, to feel cared for.
Now imagine that a hurricane is passing, or had passed recently. Babies come when they are ready and cannot be rescheduled. The power is out, some staff have been unable to travel to work, and shift replacements are stranded by flooding. None of these things matter to the baby to be delivered, and it is the midwife's job to ensure that the care each mother receives is unaffected by circumstances as well. Babies at MN have been delivered by candlelight, by flashlight, and by shining the ambulance headlights into the building. During a multiple birth night without power, a baby was resusitated by cell phone light while another was being delivered.
Storms, earthquakes, floods, lightning strikes, and even political protests - it's all in a days work for MN midwives.
Links:
By Jim Grant | Executive Director
By Cindy Obenhaus | RN, board member
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