Missing Home

Okay, okay, I think I am officially homesick...I have been here for 2 ½ months, but it seems like 2 ½ years!(okay maybe not that long, but still)...the whole medical emergency involving my dad, made me realize how far away from home I really am, and how much I really do miss my family. Then there was a scary typhoon, a twister in the city right next to me...and this is only the beginning of rainy/typhoon/stormy season here in the Philippines. When I wake up in the morning to my clothes still wet from being washed the day before, a cockroach in the middle of the bathroom and a cold shower with a worm crawling out of the crack in the tiled wall, I just want to drop everything and catch the next plane outta here! Living in a third world country is like camping 24/7 and my family knows just how much I enjoy camping, not! LOL! But then when I am sitting around the table with the Filipino midwives eating original Filipino food right after a wonderful birth, or when I am with the labouring women being able to give them love that most have never received in their entire life, or when my hands touch the baby’s head as it is being born...those are the moments I cherish, that’s when I think for a second I could live here my entire life...but then it’s gone in a flash, when I am here in the clinic alone lying in my bed at night, I am counting down the days I have left till I come home. Mom, Dave, Dad, Kelly, Darby, Colten, Dayten, Kacie, Jason, Jeremy, Brandon, Shannon, Jenna, Jessica, G-ma, G-pa, all my sister in-laws, uncles, aunts, and nieces and nephews (did I mention I have a big family) I miss you guys so much! 171 more days till I come home...I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

 This birth was so fast, my preceptor didn't make in time...

Brand  new mommy and baby

"Rain, rain go away, come again another day"

Look how safe I am in this area, the water level everywhere else were waist to head high! 

Philippine Culture

Every day during my time here in the Philippines it seems I learn something new about the culture here, and I love it! Here are some things I have learned/observed during my time here...

when you go to ones house they will serve you a merianda(snack), even if they are dirt poor. It usually consists of a packaged snacky food like a brownie, muffin, crackers, ect... and coca cola to drink. It is considered very rude to refuse this merienda, so when we go on postpartum visits to do checkups on the moms and new babies, we really can’t plan to see many people on the same day, because if we did, we would get fat! When one is eating a meal they should always ask everyone who is there if they would like to partake in the meal, saying “lets eat!” One should be asked at least 2-3 times before actually partaking in this meal though, or it is equally polite to say, “no thankyou I am full.” Also, when eating the meal, never take the last “bite” like the last spoonful of rice, or piece of chicken ect... because there should always be enough for one more person to eat. So, in America parents often say to their children, "you are not getting down from this table until you eat all that food that is on your plate, you know there are starving children in Africa who don’t have any food to eat!" But here, there is always some food left on the table for that starving child just in case he walks through the front door during suppertime. As far as everyday mannerisms go... the Philippines is a fairly modest country, despite the extremely hot and humid climate, jeans and a t-shirt is what most Filipinos wear on an everyday basis. Short shorts are considered very risqué here, and spaghetti strap shirts/tanktops are rarely worn by the local women and girls. Now the people here are used to seeing foreigners wearing tanktops and shorts and do not judge them, but since I have been here for 2 months now and am trying to fit into the culture more, I am becoming more aware of my clothing choices everyday. But, it is seriously way too hot to wear jeans!!! So I am trying to stick to skirts, and Capri’s. Some other things I have learned is to never point with my index finger, if you are calling someone towards yourself, reach out the whole hand pointing all fingers downwards and wave them towards yourself. To point to something, you use your whole hand, or more commonly by pursing your lips. And of course I am now used to drinking a coco cola/all soft drinks out of a plastic bag with a straw, eating all meals with a spoon and fork only, and of course getting used to eating rice with every meal!  I never enter ones house without first standing outside, asking if anyone is home, and being invited in. Always taking off my shoes upon entering a house, even if the floors are made out of dirt, and stay standing until invited to sit. I am not going to lie, being a foreigner here is challenging at times, like...

-Being literally stared at by everyone around me wherever I go with people yelling after me things in tagalog, and the abundance of questions I am asked on a daily basis like... where are you going, where are you from, do you know how to speak tagalog, how long are you staying here, are you single, can I take a picture of you? Ect...

-When shopping, being stalked by the store attendants, they follow me like little children wherever in the store I go repeatedly saying “yes, maam?” –I think this is probably my biggest pet peeve here, I just want to shop in peace, and it is always very awkward shopping for feminine products when I have at least 3 male attendants standing around me...therefore, it takes me double the time to get what I need!

-Getting used to bargaining because since I am American EVERYONE tries to charge me more money when buying something

-Being followed by the starving street children begging me over and over again for money-now this is the hardest thing for me, everyone who knows me, knows that my heart goes out to children, especially ones in need, but when I can, I try to buy them some food, instead of giving them money.

-Making friends with the reptiles and insects that live with me because there really is no way to get rid of them no matter how hard I try, and I have had to come to terms with that...maybe I should start naming them, what do you think? hehe!

-Throwing away toilet paper, never flushing it

-Hand flushing the toilet with a bucket full of water

-Cold showers

-Living an ocean away from my family and friends, I miss you guys!!!

Now, could you survive in the Philippines?...I know my mom would definitely not, LOL!! Comment and tell me what you think? 

What could be better than drinking a coke out of a plastic baggy:-)

"Here we are children, start pecking...now!"

That poor mama dog looked like she was starving, but her pup looks nice and plump!

What are you looking at?! 

 

This is an older pic of me doing a prenatal on one of the moms
 who lived in the landfill area in Olongapo 

Shoulder Dystocia

Here in the Philippines, the biggest fear among the doctors, midwives, and mothers during pregnancy is growing a big baby. As some of you who are reading this might know after 20 weeks gestation the fundal height(measurement of the baby in the uterus) is supposed to match up with how many weeks the mom is pregnant, so if she is 28 weeks pregnant her fundal height should be 28cm. Well, it is different here in the Philippines. The mothers fundal height needs to be 2 cm less than her weeks gestation or else the baby is considered too big, meaning if she is 28 weeks pregnant her fundal height should be 26cm. And at the time of birth if her fundal height is more than 34cm everyone is worried about the baby being too big and there being a shoulder dystocia at birth. (this is supposed to be a very rare occurrence of when the head of the baby is born but the shoulders are stuck, it is a true obstetric emergency and the baby can become brain dead or die after only a few minutes). I have always believed that God created a woman’s body to give birth, and he created the baby inside of her, therefore the baby is usually the perfect size it needs to be to fit through its moms pelvis, I really didn’t believe in baby’s being "too big" to be vaginally delivered until maybe now... just 3 hours ago we delivered a baby girl who’s head was out for 12 minutes before her body was finally born. When the baby's head was coming, it took a long time, it was like the head was stuck as well, but when the head was finally born, and the baby's shoulders did not rotate and come out with the mothers next contraction, we knew right away that this was a shoulder dystocia. We got the mom on her hands and knees while I called the other staff midwife to come help who lives just right across the street, I asked Gerlene to go in and reach for the baby’s posterior shoulder/arm to manuever out, when that didn’t work we flipped the mom on her back putting pressure on her pubic bone to try to get the babies shoulder unstuck, then again on her hands and knees ect...apparently the baby had her arm twisted behind her back as well... finally we got the babies posterior arm born, but the baby was still stuck for 2 more minutes until with 2 midwives hands maneuvering and pulling that this baby girl was born. At birth she was totally flat, no heart beat, no respirations after stimulating, I immediately gave the mother an injection of pitocin to prevent hemorrhage and initiated neonatal resuscitation, I was giving breaths while the other midwife gave chest compressions, 1-2-3- breathe, 1-2-3 breathe... was the only words being spoken, other than the prayers that were being whispered throughout the room. For 3 minutes this little baby girl didn’t breathe, cry, or move...but miracousely she slowly started coming around, she would gasp every once in a while, her heart tones started coming up to the normal range, and she finally started breathing on her own, but it was only once she cried for the first time 15 minutes after birth that us midwives let out a deep breath and knew she would be okay. As crazy as this sounds this is the 2^nd shoulder dystocia we have had during the 2 weeks I have been here, the first one was a little baby boy who’s head was out for 9 minutes before his body. During a shoulder dystocia, you really only have 3-5 minutes to get that baby born, any longer than that, and there is a high chance of the baby having damage to the brain from lack of oxygen, and after 10 minutes it is a known fact the baby can die. We only have God to thank that these babies are okay, with no signs of damage to the brain, or body. Its after births like these when sitting in the silence of my room that I wonder, now why am I choosing to be a midwife again? But with birth the good much outweighs the bad, and even in the bad times just one look at that mom and new baby I know its meant to be...

We are made to do this work and its not easy...I would say that pain is part of the glory, or the tremendous mystery of life. And that if anything, it's a kind of privilege to stand so close to such an incredible miracle.
~Simone in Klasson 2001

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

There she is, all 8.6 lbs of her, which is considered huge here in the Philippines,
I thank God that she is okay!

And 2 hrs later I wake up to another woman at the door in labor, she had her baby 15 minutes after she got

here, and the baby just slid right out, I think it was just God reassuring me, in most cases birth is normal, and that I 

can do this :-) oh the life of being a midwife!  

Pictures!

All of us(my preceptor and her family)at the coconut house...everything is made out of or from a coconut

The Malls here are crazy!! 

Its weird to see all of the poverty here, and then walk into a huge busy mall realizing that
the people here are either dirt poor, or rich, there is rarely any middle class. There has to be somewhere for the wealthy
people to shop

So sad, this is supposed to be a playground

When it rains, it floods. This is taken out of the window of a taxi I was riding in 

The delivery room here at the clinic

The waiting room

The kitchen, now mom you have no room to complain about your "small" kitchen, LOL

My room/the midwives room 

Our lovely bathroom with the toilet you flush using a bucket and water

The prenatal area, we pull down the curtains for patient privacy

What the clinic looks like from the outside, "Daughters Of Faith Lying-In"

The clinic

Bathing a lil baby girl before they head home

My first "catch" here in the Philippines, have delivered 3 babies since then

Angelo

Just a couple of days ago we had the most emotionally challenging birth I have been to yet...a girl who had just turned 14 walked into the clinic in labor. She was a rape victim, her father was the one who had impregnated her. This little girl was very unhappy and scared when she walked in. She had rejected her baby for the entire pregnancy and was not eating or taking care of herself, therefore she only looked about 6 months pregnant but was actually 9. She was planning on giving the baby away to a neighbor once it was born, we explained to her and the family that if she was to give up the baby, it wouldn’t erase what had happened to her, and it might even add more trauma, because she would always remember the day her little baby was born...ect. Anyways, despite the odds of this being a high risk case we decided the best thing for her would be to let her stay here and give her the most safe, gentle, loving birth experience as possible; so we admitted her. During the labor we had the lights down low and we took turns one at a time supporting this girl along with family members she wanted with her. We were all quietly praying for her and this baby since the moment she walked in. At first during contractions it seemed she was re-living her rape experience, she would just cry. But she was a tough little girl, and started coping very well after awhile. She was only in labor for about 7 hours, and pushed for a half an hour. Once the little(4lb, 3oz) otherwise healthy baby boy was born, we put him skin to skin right on his mama, he cried vigoursly right from the start. I guided the mothers hand to her baby and said, "look at your baby, isn’t he just so cute!" But she just checked out. She fell into a sleeping state, and even though she had minimal blood loss from the delivery, by her vitals it seemed she was going into some sort of shock. We were thinking it was emotional? It never got to the point of being dangerous or anything, we just stayed right with her keeping an eye on her vitals, and keeping the baby skin to skin/nursing. We would gently wake her up every so often making sure she was still responsive, and have her take a drink or something. It wasn’t until after that first hour that she actually came into the present realizing reality. She was eating some soup meanwhile the baby was still nursing, and every once in a while she would look down at him, I think in disbelief that she actually had a real live baby in her arms. Slowly but surely she started bonding with that baby through the night and was interacting with him, and responding to his needs; she fell in love with him. By morning she had decided to keep the baby and raise him with the support of her family. Overnight she had transformed from a hurt scared little girl, into a woman; into a mother. When we were filling out paper work getting ready to discharge her and the baby, we asked what they were going to name him, the family said, “oh, we don’t have a name yet,” but all of a sudden the new mama piped up and said, I will name him Angelo, which means Angel.

I have permission from the family to share these pictures...

Me and the other student Megan helping mother breastfeed
and "protecting the space"

She is helping her lil baby latch on, he is such a good little nurser! 

I totally fell in love with her and that baby!

Angelo

Manila

Wow! It has been a crazy couple of days. I am moved here to Manila, and the first day I arrived I turned on my computer to find that it decided to not work any more! I kind of freaked...but it is finally fixed, thankfully. Anyways living here in Manila actually isn’t all that much different from Olongapo. I mean I am definitely living more of the Philippine lifestyle...no flushing toilet, no water pressure, ants, cockroaches, and geckos are part of the building no matter how clean we keep it, and last but not least nothing is convenient. But this is all part of living in the Philippines, right? I have been here for 4 days now, and we have already had 2 births! I am living here in the clinic, currently there is another wonderful student here named Megan with me who has been able to show me around and teach me the way things are done here. The other day we went out to eat at a really awesome restaurant called the coconut house where all of the food, drinks, and dishes had coconut incorporated into it someway or another. It was sooo yummy and unique. but, Megan is leaving in a week and then it will be just me living here in the clinic. We do prenatals every Wednesday and Friday, where we start by teaching a childbirth education class, then do the checkups. It seems to me, the main clientele here are teenagers, our youngest patient is 13 years old. My heart totally goes out to these moms and it is very hard not to fall in love with them and their babies! I am practicing my tagalog alot, because I will most likely be the one here who answers the door in the middle of the night to a laboring woman, and I need to be able to communicate with her. The midwife Gerlene who is my preceptor and owner of the clinic, just lives walking distance from here, and then there are 2 other staff midwives who rotate being here. So, I hope I wont be too lonely. It is definitely going to take me awhile to become confident enough to travel around in Manila on my own, I mean, I got lost in Olongapo, and Manila is just so much busier. As my friends and family know, I have never had a good sense of direction...but, I feel like that is going to change very soon :-) I hope all of you back home are doing well, and I will post pics of the clinic and Manila ASAP, I am alot busier here than I was in Olongapo so I haven't had the time to take many pics yet.

"I've heard there are troubles of more than one kind, some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've brought a big bat. I'm already you see, now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"
-Dr. Suess

Would you like a Boca?

When Jen and I were waiting for our buntis(pregnant woman) to come for a prenatal checkup in Mercy land yesterday morning, the neighbor asked me if I would like a Boca(coconut). I said sure, thinking she was going to just give me a piece of coconut she had or something, But she asked me to come with her to get the Boca. She led me to a young couples house, told them I wanted a boca, and the young man literally climbed up the coconut tree with his bare hands and feet and chopped a boca down for meJ It was very fun to watch, and I videod it just for you guys!… but I was holding the camera in a vertical angle and don't know how to flip the video the right way :( oh well, its still fun to watch...

The coconut was very yummy! And the coconut water that was inside was way better tasting than when I have drank it from a coconut in the states...it was naturally slightly carbonated, sweet, and coco nutty!

Right before he jumps on the tree like spider man hehe!

Coconut trees are so pretty, and did you know that coconuts are actually very large, shiny and green in their true form...

Change of Plans...

Well, while Cecille and Emelda are packing up and moving into the temporary birth center we have set up here, I will be getting ready to move to…Manila! Yep, that’s right, plans here can change in a blink of an eye, it’s the fun part about living in the developing world…I will be moving to Manila in about 2 weeks and staying for 3 months apprenticing with a Filipina midwife who has a VERY busy birth clinic down there. Moving to Manila now while the birth center here is being built and clientele established, is giving me the chance to immediately start catching babies getting the experience I came here for. Manila is about a 3 hour bus ride from Olongapo, and one of the largest cities in the world. To tell you the truth, I am a little nervous, because I just got used to living here in Olongapo, and I feel like moving to Manila will be like culture shock all over again, but I know that it will be good for me; and I am definitely learning what being flexible actually meansJ(gotta be flexible in order to be a good midwife!) I will also miss everyone here during the time that I am gone, but I will be back in Olongapo after the three months in Manila just in time to jump into all of the action here. Manila is definitely bigger, busier, and more polluted. Also, Manila does not have as many “Americanized” products that I am able to find in this area. the reason being the US military was based here for a long time making in impact on what food and other products were sold...So, I won’t be able to have my little American treats that remind me of homeL... but, I am excited to get busy and start catching babies!      

A Day Out On My Own

Oh my Goli! (oh my goodness in tagalong) where do I even began…First off, I am feeling much better(thanks for all the prayers!) So my day began with this morning doing checkups on our moms in Iram, and coming home realizing I really needed to go grocery shopping. Since I have been here for 3 weeks, I decided that I should be confident enough to go out on my own for the very first time and go grocery shopping myself, right? Boy was that a mistake! Now, in order to get to Royal (the grocery store) I have to take the brown jeepney with the white top to the market(15 min. ride) then hop on a yellow jeepney to the Subic Bay gate(15 min ride) then walk to this parking lot and hop on a bus which takes me to Royal(5 min ride). Easy enough, right? Well I got to the grocery store just fine and was all proud of myself(I even stopped in Starbucks, it reminded me soo much of home, I almost cried!) but on my back, well, that is a total different story….So, I was on the yellow jeepney needing to get off to switch to the brown jeepney with the white top, when I totally realized that I had no clue when to get off to get to their terminal. By this time, I knew I had already totally missed it, because I had been in this yellow jeepney for quite a while, and he was driving in an area I did not even recognize at all. To make things worse, it was also getting very dark outside! So I prayed that the driver would know english and surprisingly he knew enough to understand that I needed to get to the brown Jeepney with the white top. He informs me that we had passed that stop a long time ago! Ugh! Right after he tells me that he would turn around and take me to where I needed to go, I got a random txt message from Vicki saying “hey Alyssa, where are you!?  How would you like to go to a birth right now!” Well, of course I told her I would love too, and I would try to get there ASAP! While thinking to myself, “Shoot, what a great day Alyssa to think that you were able to go out on your own!” LOL!  Traffic was crazy, but I told the jeepney driver to drive fast because I needed to get to a birth! So, I finally got to a brown jeepney with a white top to take me to Kalapati and arrived in this health center right when the mom was pushing, like 10 minutes before the baby was born! I was able to assist this “government” midwife for the delivery and after. To fill you in about this midwife…Our Mercy In Action team had introduced ourselves to her awhile ago and she informed us that if she had a birth she would call us so that I could assist her, she is also open to learning some new things from us to improve her quality of care... The baby was a girl, weighing about 6 ½ pounds, which is considered “big” here in the Philippines, she was healthy and oh so cute! And the mom did so well. I was able to initiate breastfeeding and basically I wasable to "protect” the baby from being taken away from the mother hehe… It was great! I stayed there for about an hour and a half after the baby was born, and then had to get my groceries in the refrigerator, so I said my goodbyes and took a tricy home. Wow, what a day! 

Yes, Starbucks has made it all the way to the Philippines!! 

So happy!! Every sip reminded me of home!...okay maybe I am a little too
excited about this whole Starbucks thing hehe

Mom, dad, and their new baby girl...my first birth in the Philippines!

sick:-(

As most all of you have heard, I have been under the weather these past couple days. I am feeling a little bit better today mostly now just have sinus congestion, headache, fatigue, and cough. No more fever or throwing up, so thats good. Thankyou to all who are praying/sending good thoughts over my way. Yesterday I missed doing prenatals with the midwives in the landfill area, but in a way glad I didn't go because when the midwives got back they told me that they went to one of our patients houses, and her deceased grandfather who had apparently passed away 3 days beforehand was still laying there in her house! Wow! I don't know how I would of reacted. What do you do in that kind of situation? We will check up on her again next week because she has very high blood pressure, and at 18 weeks pregnant we were still not able to hear a baby's heart beat. She is definitely in my prayers.

Today I was supposed to go help Cecille and Joks paint the temporary birth center, but they had to go do it without me. I will be moving in there within the next couple of days and do not know when/if I will be able to get internet connection. The internet guys here are like the cable guys in the states, where you wait at home all day for them, and then they don't even show up! I hope all of you back at home are doing well, and I miss you guys! For some reason, me laying here sick makes me miss my family even more.  

Moving soon...

Homebirth was just recently outlawed here in the Philippines, the thinking behind outlawing it was, if they make every women go to the hospital or clinic to have her baby, the infant and maternal mortality rates would hopefully go down in this country. But, the thing is the hospital and clinic fees are too expensive for most families, and many women do not want to go to the hospital. And now since the law is midwives here cannot attend homebirths, the moms just deliver the baby on their own without anyone. As you can see this law is not working out as planned here. And since us midwives have been doing prenatal checks 3 times a week we have some moms that are coming to us who’s due dates are very soon, and we cannot deliver them in their home. This is why we need to get a clinic going ASAP. Vicki, the director of Mercy In Action found a cute little house that we can convert into a temporary birth clinic until the building of the main birth center is done. I will be moving into this temporary clinic with Cecille and Emelda( Filipina  midwives) probably next week. All morning today we were cleaning the entire house inside and out, and we will be painting this weekend, then moving our stuff in. It is not far from where I am living now, probably a 12 minute Jeepney ride. It is actually on the same dirt road that one would take to get to Mercy Land, which is where the birth center is being built. Our Mercy In Action team has been making more friends with the locals, we are getting more mothers coming to us for care, and people here are starting to trust us more it seems...we just need to keep on praying!  

Laundry day

This chore is much more time consuming and complicated here…First, I have to put my dirty clothes in the washing machine than fill it up with water from a hose and add soap. Now, the philippinos call it a washing machine, but its more like a big basin that will swish around your clothes in soapy cold water for about 10 minutes. Once my clothes were throughouly “swished” I had to turn the knob to "drain" which drains all of the water out through a hose, then I grab my soaking wet laundry put it in a basket to take to the shower where I have a big and small bucket full of yet again cold water. I put my clothes in the big bucket and let them soak for awhile, then hand wash them before I dip them into the smaller bucket of water to rinse the article. After I am done with that whole process I take my laundry and put it into the dryer (which is like a salad spinner, and spin dries the clothing for 5 minutes) once that is done I hang up my still wet laundry on the clothesline to fully dry, and of course for everyone to see all my pretty clothes hahaha…now if that process isn’t hard enough already I forgot to mention that the washing/spinning machine is located out back in an alleyway type thing that is full of mosquitoes. So, I have to douse myself in “off” every time I go out there, and then when it is time for me to get my clothes off the line, I never come out of it without at least one bite, because for some reason the little buggers love hanging out inside my clothing and start going crazy attacking me when I shake my clothes to get them off and put them in my basket to bring inside…Mom: when I get back home I wont mind doing laundry anymore, because in America it truly is such an easy choreJ At least I don’t have to handwash my clothes with rocks in a creek…

Filling up the "washing machine" with nice cold hose water

done being in "washing machine" now time to soak

scrub, scrub, scrub

time to rinse

now time for the dryer/spinner

hanging up clothes to fully dry

yep, my clothes are ready for mosquitoes now lol 

Prenatal Day-Landfill

Wow! What a day. Yesterday we went to the landfill to offer our services to the people living there.  Yes there is people actually living in the active landfill here. I would say that these families are the poorest of the poor. The area is more like a land full of garbage, not a land fill because there is no hole that the garbage goes in like at the garbage dumps that I have seen in the states. The garbage was just piled up creating mountains and mountains of garbage for miles. I had to put on a straight face and pretend like the awful smell didn’t bother me. Tons of plastic bags were blown by the wind and stuck to the fences around this landfill. The people that live there start early in the morning and “shop” within the mountains of garbage for things that they need. Most of the houses are made out of scrap pieces of wood and garbage; there were some houses that had cement/brick walls. My heart goes out to these people. Our team walked around from house to house asking if there were any pregnant woman they knew. After searching for awhile we found and went to a house of a woman who was pregnant and when we told her about us, she was so happy and blessed that we were there and soon enough we had 12 buntis(pregnant woman) at this house waiting for a checkup from us. The news that we were there went around fast. The entire crowd of woman had not received any prenatal care yet in their pregnancy, and even though some are due in a couple weeks they had not yet been seen by anyone and didn’t really have a plan of who was going to be their birth attendant at the time of birth. Some of you reading this are probably thinking. “What is the point of helping these woman when their babies are going to be born in a garbage dump and probably live very poor lives, if they even live past childhood.” Well, the point is that every woman has the human right to a skilled birth attendant being with her and her baby at the time of birth no matter if she is the poorest or richest woman alive; and if we can get that mom and new baby off to a good start bonding and breastfeeding, we can promote safe motherhood and child survival. We were able to give all the woman prenatal vitamins and some of them iron supplements, because most were anemic due to malnutrition. I pray that they choose to have us attend them at the time of birth, but we never know which moms are actually going to contact us when they go into labor. Our team will keep going to the landfill every Friday to do checkups. I am glad that we found an area where the woman are willing to let us help them.“If we are to heal the planet, we must begin by healing birthing.”~Agnes Sallet Von Tannenberg

It is hard to see in these pics but this is all garbage-the big mountain thing on the right is a huge pile of garbage