The Heart of the Midwife
By Hillary and Jeff James, MLI Co-Executive Directors
Every year when Christmas comes we relate to the nativity scene, reminding us of the African homes we are privileged to enter. There we meet families living similarly to the setting in which Jesus was born – mud walls and thatched roofs, families sharing space and warmth with animals, a thick bed of straw for comfort, no running water for cooking or cleaning, no electricity for light, none of the comforts we consider essential. We know the poor understand hardship and fortitude in ways we never will. To the billions who live so simply, we wish you a very blessed Christmas! We know God shines his light on you in a special way.
And now, we welcome you to MLI’s First Annual Christmas Gift! Each Christmas we will offer a special gift for you, brought home in our luggage from Africa. This year enjoy a hand-carved nativity scene from Kenya (see above). Each one is carved from a single piece of acacia wood with the bark still intact, a unique item that will highlight your Christmas decorations. We’re sure you will be impressed by the artists’ innovative carving and added hinges so that you can close it up and store it away until next Christmas. Perhaps you’d like to offer a unique gift to some of your loved ones this year, with the added benefit of supporting a charity you love. We do the wrapping and mailing for you, with a note indicating the gift is from you and some information about our charity. We are happy to fill as many orders as you like!
“I don't know what happened because she was communicating with me. I was talking to her, so why all of a sudden …? I will always be thinking about the patient, why she died!”
~ Midwife from Ghana
By Dr. George Mulcaire-Jones
When we train midwives and physicians in best practices for managing obstetrical emergencies, we are invariably talking about blood – blood pouring from the uterus with a postpartum hemorrhage, high blood pressure leading to a stroke, a woman’s blood which is failing to clot, the urgent need for a blood transfusion.
Yet there is another kind of bleeding that is taking place . . . the bleeding from the heart of a midwife who is there when a mother she is caring for dies. Studies show that a high percentage of midwives have ongoing trauma from witnessing the death, leading to burnout and to questioning their worth as a professional and as a person. One midwife put it in these words, “I do not eat well, I can’t concentrate, I cannot do anything for myself. . . When I go home, instead of doing other things with my family (husband and children), I cannot do it, so it affects me and my family at large”.
Our training in Safe Passages examines this kind of bleeding as well. It can only be arrested with support, spiritually, psychologically, and relationally. How can one not be wounded from witnessing a mother dying in the very act of giving birth? It is senseless, it is absurd. The midwife walks home late at night, the stars in the night scrambled, the constellations falling apart, a pale, sickly moon on the horizon. Her world is turned upside down.
In January we will be providing Safe Passages training to midwives, nurses, and physicians from four dioceses in Northern Uganda. We will be providing life-saving education and equipment – ranging from anti-shock garments that stabilize a mother’s circulatory collapse to medications that lower her blood pressure to prevent a stroke from toxemia. At the same time we are providing clinical training, we will be reaching out in solidarity to the hearts of midwives – to better understand how they have been wounded and how they can be supported. They will share with us their stories and their journey to hope and healing amid tragedy.
Your support makes such a difference in the lives of mothers and the midwives who care for them. They do not bleed alone. The constellations do come together. At Christmas we are reminded of a bright star over Bethlehem, shepherds watching, angels rejoicing and the first breath and cry of the infant Jesus. That star is still shining and calls us all to the cradles of life, to a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and a mother gazing into his eyes – and into our own.
