_This Sunday morning, at our clinic Soley Lavi, a new mother gave birth. Her name is Tamara, and although she was doubtful that she could do it, she had a lot of support and reassurance from her family and our student midwives.

When she began to push her baby out, I grabbed Tracy's hands and we did a lovely four handed catch with Sherline assisting as the baby was born. As we helped the loud little boy onto his mothers chest, she joined him, bursting into song, and bringing a tear to my eye.

Though many hundreds of babies have passed through my hands, this reaction was new for me. Although I did not understand the Creole, I understood her meaning clearly... Give Thanks! Give Thanks! Ax'e!

Olivia Kimball. Midwife, Jacmel ~ Haiti

_The Soley Lavi birth center has been gestating a big change. This labor of love is now entering transition, about to birth a new phase of the clinic’s life. In February, Solely Lavi will move to a smaller, more secure house a little further from the noisy, dusty heart of Jacmel.

This move will benefit the clinic in many ways, only one of which is a more peaceful and quiet location. In addition, the smaller property will be less of a financial burden for the organization, meaning more funds available for continuation and expansion of the services we are able to provide to our families. We are also investing in sustainable development of the new property, including the installation of a solar-powered water pump and a composting toilet.

Like most transitions, especially those birth-related, this one has been filled with hard work, challenges, leaps of progress, and even a few good laughs. Clare did a lot of work to prepare for the move, packing up extra supplies to store safely until the new location was ready, and locally donating items that the birth center would not be able to use.

In November, the day arrived that we had packed up everything we would need to store until the move. This was a big accomplishment, and was marked by a sizeable pile of boxes that stood ready to be transported to Madame Roi’s house. Madame Roi is an auxiliary nurse and primary school principal involved with the clinic. Having space at her house to safely store supplies was a big help. Now, we just had to get all those boxes across town.

Clare had hired a local man for the move, and he arrived as close to the appointed time as one could expect on the tropical time-line. After assessing the volume of items we had to transport, he realized he did not have the correct vehicle. He promised to return promptly with a truck.

A short time later, the “truck” beeped at the gate, and we opened up to find a white Toyota Corolla, driven by the enthusiastic mover-man. The car looked like there was not one square inch of the body that had not suffered some ding or scratch over the years. It was stripped of any soft luxury it may have had when it was new. Despite the body-shape, the sedan did indeed appear to be used as a “truck.”

We laughed openly, unable to hide our disbelief that this would be the vehicle to transport many pounds of medical supplies, and even a large wooden table! The man laughed along with us, and assured us that the car was up for the task. It was a good-natured and humorous exchange of expectations, doubts, and assurances. We North Americans needed to let go of our preconceived notions of how to do things, and trust that this man and his “truck” could handle the job.

We got to work, packing the trunk, the backseat, and the top of the car with boxes. The wooden table served as a “roof-rack” of sorts; positioned up side down on the top of the car, it was a perfect place to stack more boxes. Rope was found, and we secured the items and the table to the top of the car. It was time to take the first load to Madame Roi’s.

The car eased toward the front gate, but suddenly we shouted “stop, stop!” The table legs were too tall to fit through the gate! The driver backed up and we strategized for a moment. It would have been a huge job to unpack the boxes and take the table off the top of the car. And we had to move the table one way or another. So we got a saw. It was just a utility table, anyway, used to store supplies off the floor. We measured, and Antoine, our security guard and handyman, climbed atop the car and cut each of the table legs down the necessary inches to clear the gate.

It was efficient, effective, and absolutely hilarious. The unique situation of living in an environment so different from what you’re used to requires flexibility, creativity, and detachment from expectations. Oh, and humor, of course. The supplies were safely stored, and they await the new house to be ready.

The move is slated to take place in late February 2012. The four-room house front and back yards will be split in half to house both the birth clinic and the volunteer quarters. The front two rooms will be labor and postpartum rooms, respectively, and the front yard and porch will serve as consultation areas. The two back rooms and the lush backyard with its papaya and banana trees will house the volunteer midwives and apprentices.

Stay tuned to the blog for updates on the move and the inauguration of the new location. This is an exciting new step toward the Soley Lavi clinic being a permanent and fundamental presence in Jacmel. Your donations will help fund the set-up costs of the new clinic, and will assure that Soley Lavi can continue to provide attentive, personal, and comprehensive midwifery care to many deserving families of Haiti. In addition, the training of Haitian student midwives that takes place at the clinic is creating a sustainable, peer-oriented and local existence of midwifery care, which will help reduce mother and infant mortality, and provide Haitian families with a gentle and healthy start to life.

"This move is happening this week and MHI Board member, Olivia Kimball is on ground helping with the move and creating the sustainable aspect of Soley Lavi. Thank you Olivia and Sherline, our Haitian apprentice midwife who works unconditionally. We could not do this without the two of them.

Thanks for reading, and for your support of gentle birth worldwide!

~ Jenna Humphreys, student midwife, NMI, MHI, Birthing From Within Mentor-in-Training

_Situated in one of the largest Internally Displaced Persons camps in Northern Uganda, not only does the Earth Birth birthing clinic provide maternity care to local women, it's also become a safe space for those displaced by war to gather and work on projects. Founded in 2008 by Brooklynite Rachel Zaslow, the clinic is home to around five births a day and sees up to 50 women daily for pre-natal care. A large part of Earth Birth's staffing consists of traditional birth attendants, women who practice midwifery as it has been handed down to them from generation to generation; the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of Uganda's population has passed through the hands of a traditional midwife. How did someone from Oregon by way of Brooklyn end up delivering babies in Uganda?
It's a long and twisty narrative, but the short version is that I was invited to come to Uganda by a fellow New York birth worker in 2007 to volunteer in a government-funded hospital. What I witnessed there was devastating. The hospital was functioning at what the WHO estimated to be over ten times its capacity. Women were turned away in labor or sent to walk home minutes after giving birth, often bleeding to death on the road home. Women who were admitted to the hospital were often treated violently by the hospital staff for not pushing fast enough or failing to bring their own piece of plastic to give birth on. These conditions made for a traumatic and dangerous place to give birth in an area that has been ravaged by war. I founded Earth Birth with my partner, midwife Olivia Kimball, the next year.

What kind of services does Earth Birth provide?
We provide prenatal care, labor and delivery; post partum, family planning and HIV/STD treatment. Women do not need to pay to receive services, but rather, they must involve themselves in a project that sustains the clinic. For example, they can choose to work in our community garden. The food that is grown there goes back to the women and the excess is sold in the market to pay for supplies at the clinic. We also have the only ambulance in the region so we are able to transport women to the closest hospital (50km away!) when a situation occurs that we cannot handle in-house.

Uganda, particularly in the north, has been devastated by civil war over the last two decades. Would you say war is exponentially harder on women?
Yes. Absolutely yes. Women are often used as tools of war. In Northern Uganda for two generations women have been used either as sex slaves for the rebel army or as reproductive machines, abducted and forced to give birth to as many babies as possible to build up the army with child soldiers. Women giving birth in captivity are faced with lack of prenatal and obstetrical care, severe starvation, untreated STDs, physical mutilation and extreme emotional trauma, among other issues. Not surprisingly, Northern Uganda has one of the highest birth rates in the world, and also one of the highest maternal and perinatal mortality rates.

__ How is the most basic human act—giving birth—also a political act?
Well, it has to do with vaginas, and I find that almost anything related to the vagina tends to become politicized. But on a serious level, childbirth is completely embedded in issues of class, race, education and privilege. Women without money or education or community support networks don't tend to have a lot of options and as such, have higher rates of complications and mortality. That's true in Uganda and it's true in New York.

Have you ever felt in danger as you worked?
Sometimes I am in the middle of a situation and I think “I really shouldn't tell my mother about this”— like the time I had to transport a woman with a stuck second twin to the hospital in the middle of the night. We were driving down the road that was the pathway for the rebel army to abduct people—and had to pull over because the feet of the baby started coming out. My partner midwife Olivia and I had to stick our butts out the window of the car so that we could reach the woman, catch and resuscitate the baby, and the thought did cross my mind, “this is really 
dangerous.” For the most part though, our clinic site is really peaceful and safe. My daughter runs around naked and chases chickens.

What lessons from Uganda have you been able to apply to your midwifery back here in New York?
My focus in NY right now is academic. I am finishing a PhD in Women's and Gender Studies. I am writing about childbirth, displacement and the problem of humanitarian aid. I don't think enough midwives write about the importance of what we do in a way that the academic community can hear. This ultimately affects the way we work together with the medical community, which ultimately affects the options that women have— so it's all just one big political act.



Also posted at The L Magazine

_Alice arrived in the Eleventh hour. Literally, translated from the Acholi language, 5 am is called the Eleventh hour, with 6 am being the Twelfth and 7 am being the First hour; the first hour of light and a new day. She arrived in what she believed would be her Ninth and final labor. Having walked about 6 miles to reach help, she was ready to push shortly after arrival. Her body was tired, she had barely eaten the previous day, and was encouraged to drink sweet tea to give her energy for the push.


The baby's tiny head emerged, quickly followed by the rest of her, and yet the mountain of Alice’s belly still loomed before us, undiminished. As her body called her to push again, she believed the placenta would be born, yet instead, tiny feet made their appearance, then disappeared again to be replaced by another, tinier head. Then the second little girl was born, followed immediately by those persistent, delicate little feet that had tried to cut the line. And then there were three. Three tiny, beautiful little girls, instead of the last, single child that Alice had been expecting.

_Needless to say it was a bit of a shock, to all involved. Earlier in the pregnancy, Alice's husband had divorced her, after bearing him 5 live children. He maintained that because he had used condoms with Alice when they had intimate relations, he had nothing to do with this new pregnancy, and sent her back to her fathers village with all of her children. She found herself suddenly single, now with 8 children all under the age of 12.

The first days were challenging, but the babies, named in Acholi tradition: Apiyo (first born), Acen (second born) and Adoch (born breech) were strong spirits, all able to latch and nurse well. Apiyo was 2 kg/ 4.4 lbs, Acen 1.8 kg/ 3.9 lbs, and tiny Adoch was only .9 kg/ 1.9 lbs. Alice was very despondent at first, overwhelmed with the reality before her. She was reluctant to hold them or nurse them, believing that at least one or more would surely die, afraid to love them. Her tired body refused to cooperate, and two, three, four days passed and still her milk failed to come in. We fed her, gave her teas, vitamins, homeopathics and loving support... yet still her milk did not come.

__And she thrived, sleeping on my chest at night and spending the day curled up with her sisters, by a week old she was starting to gain on them.

It took 6 long days for Alice's milk to come, but thankfully it did, as we knew it must. She was able to fully nurse Apiyo, but we had to continue helping her with Acen, who developed reflux, and needed to be fed small quantities in an upright position and then burped and held upright for 10 minutes after each frequent feeding. As for Adoch, more and more Alice asked that she remain with us midwives. She expressed her belief that she might be unable to care for all of her many children, collect firewood, cook, wash, find food for so many with three small babies. Who would carry the other two while she worked with one on her back? How would she manage while they were still so small and unable to be worn on the back? Several days later, her milk supply was still not adequate for three, not even quite enough for two, no matter how much we fed and hydrated her.

One afternoon, as I sat bathing the babies with her, Alice looked me in the eye, told me about her concerns and asked if I would like to have Adoch. I asked her if she was serious. She said she knew now that she could not take care of these babies alone. Could I, or someone else take one or even two of them?

With Adoch bound to my chest, and my own one-year-old daughter on my hip, I went to my co-midwife Rachel, to cry the pain in my heart because I knew I could not take this baby, yet I knew if I did not, she would surely die. And as she often does, Rachel inspired me... what if we could find an adoptive family? And as soon as we put the word out to the universe, a miracle was provided! A wonderful couple who had been trying to have their own child for years without success would like to adopt two of the babies!

Two weeks postpartum, a grateful and stronger Alice returned to her village with Apiyo, the first and strongest of the baby girls. Acen and Adoch grew steadily with us, and just a couple of days later met their new mother. Although the legal process in Uganda is lengthy, the new parents are committed to give their daughters the very best and are sticking with it through thick and thin.

At 2 1/2 months old, all the girls are now over 4 kg/ 8 1/2 lbs , healthy, strong and beautiful.
Olivia Kimball, Traditional Midwife

_When I was leaving my home in Hawai’i my family said, “we will see you on your birthday.” I had already seen that my birthday this year would be on a full moon, just as when I was born on a full moon 57 years again and so I answered, “no, there will be a baby born on my birthday and I will be there for her.” We have always in our family given to others on our birthdays, as the material gifts do not mean much in the bigger picture of life. The morning of my birthday as I was teaching a class before a morning full of prenatals, I noticed a young girl in a beautiful white dress with green, yellow and red colors at the top of her dress squirming as if she was having contractions.

_I was teaching about how important it was that the women claim their birth experience and understand what is happening to our bodies in birth. Mary Antoinette would soon have the women up doing primal dance moves that will move them and their babies through this primal experience we call birth. I watched this young mother tighten up her shoulders as another one of the Haitian apprentice midwives, Cason, gently massaged her shoulders. I explained the importance of allowing the baby to be born through our bodies and how relaxation allows the release of hormones and endorphins. I kept an eye on this young mother, now knowing that she was the reason why I stayed a couple days longer. Soon we were up doing our exercises and forming a circle of women that would learn our primal dance steps and gently massage each other’s shoulders as we moved in a circle one way, only to reverse the dancing circle and now massage the hips in front of you.

_As night came onto us, Mary Antoinette being very pregnant, went to rest and take a nap. Betina’s mom and husband did the same. That just left Betina, her sweet baby and me to move together. I gave her a strong deep massage that loosened up all the muscles in the front and back of her pelvis and touched and talked to the baby while I was massaging. I massaged her through contractions and restful minutes, as labor was now getting more intense. This intensity is something as a midwife that I love, it not only brings the baby closer but it brings the woman to a powerful place that connects her to the greatest of all mother, the earth. It is a powerful energy that I am able to tap into as the mother now is well connected to her “work” and of course the work of her baby that connects her to a deep primal place. This hard work that we do for the earth and of course it comes back to us as women in our own personal growth.

_Betina then got up after her massage and started moving in her dance, the African bird was opening her up, her baby was moving down through her pelvis and I was there to again witness and help. When the baby got low, she moved to the ground and curled up, I went and got two pillows, one for her head and one between her legs and laid down to hold her. Betina had chosen the ground, not a bed to birth and I knew and she knew just where to be. She was holding onto me tightly in a big hug and she looked and me so sweetly and said,” I love you Clare,” I did not even know she spoke English. I was so touched and honored to be part of love again. I called out to Mary Antoinette to come and catch her baby and to her mom who was also resting and to her supportive husband. Mary Antoinette gracefully supported the head and Betina as the baby come into the world, I was privileged to keep her in my arms breathing with her. Betina controlled her breath in a deep “aaaa” as her body opened up to let her baby come so peacefully to her. Again I was blessed to witness this ceremony of birth and the power of a young woman.
Later Betina and her husband asked Mary to interpret for them, they asked me if I would name their baby. I was shocked, as it is a big responsibility to name a baby, the name that they will hear and it will become who they are. At first, I was questioning whether I was ready to do this naming of a baby, but I heard my “motherwit” speak…say yes. I answered that I was honored but the name would be African,. it would go back to their ancestors just as she did when she birthed. They smiled and the next day, Mary Antoinette and I went to her home to give the baby her name. It came to me so strongly, Sankofa…the name of an African bird that means to go back and get it. It meant for me that Sankofa had come to her mom, allowed her to fill the power of that mighty African bird which Betina had become during her dance of birth. I explained this to the family when I came, and they all smiled, it was the name that they wanted. I was asked to be the godmother of my special birthday baby gift, Sankofa.

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