MamaBabyHaiti

Vision

MamaBabyHaiti.org

Our vision is to staff and maintain a free standing birth center in Haiti that will serve as a safe and clean place for women to come for free quality health care from midwives and naturopathic doctors. We will provide prenatal, birth, postpartum, and pediatric care, as well as education and other life saving services. Our birth center will have necessary medical supplies, running water, and a generator for power. We will provide care 24/7.

We envision women coming one time per week for group prenatal care and us going to surrounding villages two times per month to provide prenatal care and village healthcare for families.

We envision mothers and families meeting in our classroom space weekly to learn about prenatal health and nutrition, hygiene, childbirth education, breastfeeding education with the goal of exclusive breastfeeding for a minimum of one year, contraception methods, and sustainable living (including herbal health remedies, gardening and raising chickens). We envision having a garden at our birth center that will be used as an example for gardening fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs.

We envision our birth center being a place where pregnant women and their families can fill jugs with clean drinkable water. We also plan on giving the families that complete our program water filtration systems to promote continual health. We plan on feeding our clients a healthy meal at their prenatal appointments, classes and during their postpartum stay at the birth center.

We envision collaborating with Haitian midwives and midwifery students to reduce the maternal, fetal and neonatal mortality rate in Haiti. We feel we will all benefit from learning from each other and serving the women together in safe and gentle birth.

I just read about this organization through Stand and Deliver. They have volunteer opportunities for Student Midwives lasting 1 to 3 months. I'm really hoping to get the opportunity to volunteer abroad as a student midwife!

Midwifery is such a beautiful profession that transcents all cultulres! I am so happy be a part of it!

Doula Ambitions

My week has been crazy! I spent the last five days in Gainesville for my HIV/AIDS workshop and then class. On Tuesday we had another anatomy exam. Not everyone is doing great and I really don't want anyone not to pass! That's been making me anxious. I don't want any of my sister midwives to leave school!

On Thursday I went to Baby Love and met up with AnthroDoula. It was so nice to meet an anthropologist/doula, especially since I myself was in graduate school for the same thing less than two years ago! We had such a great time! She told me that she met a couple local doulas and they mentioned a huge divide between the home birth vs hospital birth sect. Hopefully, we can bridge that divide. We shall see.

Two Hundred Dollars Richer!

So I woke up early today and checked my work email and this was in my inbox:

"Dear Jessica,

Congratulations! The All Children’s Hospital Scholarship Committee has met and reviewed the 2010 applications for the All Children’s Hospital Scholarship Awards. You have been awarded a scholarship for $200.00. Your scholarship payment will be in the paycheck you receive October 15, 2010 and will be listed on your pay stub as “Scholarship.”

The All Children’s Hospital Scholarship Committee thanks you for your interest in the All Children’s Hospital Scholarship program and encourages you to apply in the future if you remain eligible for application.

Please remember, All Children’s Hospital employees who receive scholarship awards may also be eligible to apply for tuition assistance.


Good luck as you continue your health care studies!


Sincerely,

Dan "

Today is a good day!

Ten Centimers Too Late

So I'm sitting at work and I've been seeing people come in all day to see my work friend and her baby who are upstairs. I hadn't seen my friend come down yet so I wasn't sure I was going to see her before she returned from her maternity leave. Well, today she graced me with her presence and let me just tell you, this woman looks fab for just having had her baby on Friday. I give her my warm congrats and she tells me her birth story:

Friday: Contractions 10 minutes apart for five hours at home. Calls the CNM and is informed to stay home until they are 5 minutes apart. Well, that time never seems to come so my friend and her husband decide it's time to come in to the hospital.

While at the hospital, the receptionist makes her wait in a room full of people while she gets signed in. While in triage, the nurse checks her to make sure she's in "active labor" and this isn't just "false labor." Well guess what? Momma's 8 cm and her water just broke! Cue the "Stork Team." My friend tells me she's never seen more people in a delivery room in her life!

The entire time she was pregnant she always told me she planned on getting an epidural, she had one the first time and she swears by them. Well, momma was ten centimeters too late this time and pushed her baby out unmedicated into the waiting arms of whoever the hospital OB was because her midwife hadn't even been called!

My friend was absolutely glowing! It's so amazing how drastically plans can change. Sometimes for the worst but, more importantly, sometimes for the better. I love to hear birth stories when the moms were too far gone to get an epidural and had unplanned unmedicated births. They come out with a new perspective! It's beautiful.

Saint Pete on a bike

Sarah came over today when I got off work and we went on a two hour bike ride to get our exercise on and to earn some extra puntos because we like to eat. I gave her two options, ride down to the pier/Vinoy or take the Pinellas County Trail to Mike's moms house and have him pick us up. Mike swears we wouldn't have made it to his moms house so we went to the pier.

After almost getting hit by a car on more than one occasion we've decided that we're going to keep our exercising to trails and designated sidewalks. On the way back, the sidewalk literally ended. It was nice ridding by the water though and there was a nice sidewalk just for pedestrians!

Google maps is telling me that our total bike ride was a total of 12.4 miles. Sarah calculated our earned activity points at 6, which works great for us because after our bike ride we went to C.D. Romas and got two small pizza slices and a yummy salad bar!


The new Salvador Dali Museum




The Pier




My all time favorite house in Old North East, I LOVE THAT TREE!

S.O.L.

Image From: Natalie Dee

Sometimes I feel like I have the worst luck ever. All week long I've been searching for my camera charger to no avail. As soon as I order another one on the Internet I find the one I'm missing.

This morning the midwife called me at 5:30 for a birth but I told her I couldn't make it because I had to be at work at 8. Well, the woman had her baby at 6:45. Plenty of time for me to make it to work. I am so upset about this, it has made me sad all morning.

I've also been incredibly anxious lately. I'm flat broke, my student loan money hasn't come in yet and the banks have yet to deffer my USF student loans. I've never been this "poor" before. While at USF I was always able to work almost full time at the best job ever. Now I work weekends only and am scrapping by.

Midwifery school isn't inherently difficult. If you can read, have good time management skill, do your homework, pay attention in class and get decent grades on the exams then you won't have a problem with the academic side of school. Being broke is a whole other story.

It costs me almost $50.00 a week in gas to get to school. If you don't have someone in Gainesville then you either have to drive back to your house (in my cast 2.5 hours away) or rent a hotel. Plus, all the regular school costs (books, supplies, physical and blood work, yada yada).

Oh, why am I not independently wealthy?