I’m not sure how it came up but a few of my friends and I were talking about something and one told us the story of how she was born and I thought it fitting to share with you all.
She writes,”I was born in the beautiful city of Khartoum, Sudan in Soba hospital at 4AM, upside down and with no electricity. There was only one doctor around and he was sleeping. They woke him a little while before it was time for my mother to push. He had to start the generator and others lit candles as there was no electricity.”
She’s almost 21 years old and born in 1994. I compared her birth to what I assume mine was like in Staten Island, New York. I had electricity and my mother received an epidural, but we both made it and so did our mothers. I was amazed by her story not in an, “Oh my goodness how did you make it” kind of way, but in a “the pure power of nature kind of way”.
I love that you shared this story with our class. I have had similar experiences in comparing either my mother’s personal experience with birth or that of women in America with those in developing countries in which I have traveled and worked. Electricity is always something that is a marked difference. Its hard to believe that someone can go through something as emotional and intense as birth with only basic items and candlelight.
I came across this story as I was doing some research recently in an international journal called “Annals of Emergency Medicine.” Dr. James Glazer, a general practitioner, writes about his time in Belize when he was called to perform a delivery in a rural village. The woman delivering was in her adolescence and he delivered her child with barely any supplies and only with 3 candles to light the room. The woman began to hemorrhage after the baby was delivered with shoulder dystocia and Dr. Glazer was able to stop the bleeding by having the child breastfeed. There is a part in the article when he looks down and notices the only type of “sterile sponges” he had was a stack of napkins with “the familiar insignia: ‘Wendy’s.'”
In our Developing Families lecture today we discussed high-risk intrapartum and the class was organized around a case study. Its interesting to think about all the steps that we deemed prioritizing during this case study at an American hospital and then thinking about Dr. Glazer’s experience and others we have read about in class that only had basic items available.
If you have time, I definitely think the article below is worth your time!
Glazer, James L. (2002). “Birth by Candlelight.” Annals of Emergency Medicine: An International Journal. Volume 40, Issue 4. Pg 433-435. Retrieved from http://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(02)00067-7/fulltext
Thanks for sharing the article, it is a great read. It reminds me of the Kipaka hospital in Congo. In the sweltering heat, surgeries would be performed with someone fanning the doctors, nicely spreading germs in the air. Surgeries at night were performed with an oil lantern, or sometimes with a light bulb from a small gas generator.
As for birth stories, in my family, my mom had my older sister at Nairobi hospital in Kenya, definitely one of the better ones around, but it did not offer epidurals in 1991. I was born in California two years later and though she was offered an epidural, my mom declined since she had made it through her first delivery without one. My younger brother was born 6 years later, back at the Nairobi hospital (with the same doctor!), but this time my mom had to have a C-section because he wasn’t head-first.
I agree!.. Nature does play a significant role in our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not. I was born somewhere in Maryland, but a lot of my friends were born in Nigeria in similar circumstances as that of your friend. I have a friend who was born under her kitchen table! no doctor, no nurse just a few neighbors. She’s alive and well right now and so is her mother. In some cases it is important to just sit back and let nature run its course. It is easy to forget that people lived without the complications of advancing technology. This is not to say that some situations require that intervention, but it sohuld not be forced.
I agree!.. Nature does play a significant role in our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not. I was born somewhere in Maryland, but a lot of my friends were born in Nigeria in similar circumstances as that of your friend. I have a friend who was born under her kitchen table! no doctor, no nurse just a few neighbors. She’s alive and well right now and so is her mother. In some cases it is important to just sit back and let nature run its course. It is easy to forget that people lived without the complications of advancing technology. This is not to say that some situations require that intervention, but it should not be forced.
Thanks for sharing this! I think that sharing birth stories is so important for empowerment of pregnant women and awareness about birth, its power and its possible complications. This came up informally between Kyle and me last week when we were talking about our moms’ birth stories before class started. Kyle’s mom had experienced both vaginal and Cesarean births. My mom had two natural births, my older sister with an OB in a hospital and me with a midwife in a birthing center. My mom talked to me about pregnancy from the time I was young and always emphasized her positive experience with it (maybe this is why I want to be a midwife). She also was the one who taught me what a midwife is and has said that she enjoyed her experience with the midwife much more than her experience with her OB.
After the conversation with Kyle, I asked my friends if they knew much about their deliveries. It occurred to me that it’s not so common for people to know their birth stories. I think that sharing birth stories- positive, negative, or both- is essential to normalizing birth and working to improve birth experiences!
I love that the birth stories post has received the most comments. I have to add one of my own. I worked as a midwife in rural Hawaii (Molokai) from 1985-1988. One of the last deliveries happened at night during a thunderstorm. We lost electricity and the generator didn’t work, either. The airport was shut down, so I couldn’t transfer anybody off the island to Honolulu if they needed a Cesarean. For some reason I wasn’t afraid. I had to do what I had to do. So a mother came in labor, someone that was post-dates, and I was with her during her labor. By candlelight, slowly, I encouraged her to gently push her baby out. She agree to lie on her left side (the gentlest way to deliver I believe), and this enormous baby eased out. He weighed 11 pounds. She did not have a tear. It was a lovely birth. I think if we had been in Honolulu, everyone would have been afraid and assumed she would have a shoulder dystocia or some other problem. Fear can really change a process. I am not a brave person. But I do have great faith in the power of normal birth.
I’ve been meaning to comment on this for a while because I love the idea of sharing birth stories! I think that sharing birth stories is such a powerful way for people to connect.
Here is my birth story:
My mom was 37 when she had me. She had pre-eclampsia and was hospitalized and put on bed rest at 30 weeks. My mom is also a nurse and so she was pretty involved in her care once she was hospitalized. On April 5th the nurse providing her care gave her 5x’s the blood pressure medication that she needed…thankfully my mom realized and asked her about it and of course the doctor was called immediately. Her blood pressure bottomed out (as did my heart rate) and she was rushed to an emergency cesarean section…thus, I was born at 31 weeks! I was in the NICU until May 12th (my mom’s birthday) and was supposed to go home that day. But, when she went to change my diaper that morning she found blood and after some tests they found that I had necrotizing enterocolitis. Two days later they did another x-ray before making a decision about surgery and miraculously there were no signs that I had ever had nec! Soooo I got to come home on May 20th and thankfully I’ve had no complications r/t premature birth. 🙂
Reading these posts has made me feel compelled to share the birth story of my grandmother. She had always talked about her birth that took place in a cave in the Andean mountains of Peru. Her mother had given birth to 9 children previously (having lost 4 at birth or shortly afterward) and was pregnant with her last bundle (my grandmother). She never stopped working in the fields, harvesting potatoes and corn, even during the late stages of her pregnancy. One day while in the fields, she felt contractions and knew that birth was imminent. Being too far from home (let alone a hospital, which did not exist at the time), she decided to enlist the help of local “vaqueros” (farmworkers) and housed herself in an empty cave. With the help of the farmworkers, she gave birth to a healthy infant. I wish I knew more details of the birth, but alas they are lost as are the memories of our ancestors. Yet, what amazes me the most about this story is how my grandmother survived and what an extraordinary human she’s become. Anything could have gone wrong in that cave (think of all the complications we’ve talked about this semester-especially in low-resource settings) and my family and I would not be here today.