Yesterday the midwives and I traveled out to a village
called Iram, we have a building there that we can do prenatal checks out
of. We will be going there every
Tuesday, but we don’t yet have very many women coming to us because it is
taking a while to gain their trust. They are a people group that were displaced
from the big volcanic eruption (Mount Pinatubo) in 1991. But the midwives did
have one patient who was supposed to be delivering soon and when we got there we
found out that she delivered already the night before on her own. She wasnt able to contact us for some reason, when woman here go into labor and don’t have any
“load” (money) on their phone to txt the midwife, they just have the baby on their own.
It is very sad, but that is one of the reasons why having a birth center is
good because a woman can walk to the birth center where the midwives are when she goes into labor, and she doesn't have to have money on her phone in order to contact the
midwife to come to her. Anyways, we were led to where the new mom and baby were so that we could do a checkup. The baby hadn’t nursed since it was born 6 hours earlier, so our main goal was to get the baby nursing
before we left. When all was well, we
prayed over the mom and new baby and headed home. So for now I will be going with the midwives Jen and Cecille 3 times a week to do prenatal checks and be attending the homebirths. As for Mercy In Actions clinic, the process is going slower than expected and the building of the birth center has not yet been started, they are working very hard to get things going and to get all of the permits and licenses they need, but it is more complicated than one would think. Here is some pics of Iram...
