Pay a Haitian midwife's salary for one year at MN

Early one morning, Maison de Naissance (MN) Director/Midwife Supervisor Kirsty was driving to work with several other members of the day shift at the maternity center.  She spotted a woman squatting by the side of the road, and, she said, an alarm went off in her head.  She pulled over to find a newly delivered baby lying in the dirt between the exhausted mother's legs, but the delivery was not complete yet.  The mother, Marie, had gone into labor earlier that morning, and decided to walk the four miles from her home to MN to deliver the baby there, but the baby had other ideas.

Kirsty and her coworkers immediately set to work, putting a clean cloth under the baby, washing it and the mother with bottled water, and helping with the final stages of delivery.  Kirsty clamped and cut the cord, then they carefully lifted the mom and her new daughter into the back of their Landcruiser for the trip to MN.  Once there, the mother and baby were both given examinations and pronounced healthy!  They were moved into the postpartum ward for some much needed rest, while the birth was recorded so the MN community health team could check up on them after they returned home.

Midwife attended births, at the core of MN's model of care, are the most effective tool in the fight against maternal and infant mortalities, a model recently endorsed by both the UN and the World Health Organization.  Our midwives have delivered over 4700 babies in an impoverished region of Haiti, the country with the highest rate of maternal mortality in the western hemisphere, without a single mortality.

Our success, through the dedicated efforts of our midwives, and the lives of their patients, like Marie and her daughter, are a direct result of the dedication of you, our donors.  Thank you for your support!

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