Poetry Assingment

I was raised by

blonde hair, bright eyes

stay-at-home mom in Milwaukie

kind of mom.

Some occasional "shit" swearing

"clean your room" yelling,

glass breaking

kind of housewife.

Some no sleeping,

trips to Haiti,

new babies

kind of midwife.

Some day and night fighting

"get the hell out of here"

third times the charm remarrying

kind of wife.

Some sunny days swimming

movie watching, random girl days

kind of friend.

Some Christmas traditions

and children's books

loving, caring, generous

unconditional love

"I love you to the moon and back"

kind of mama.

~Emilia Evans

The State of the World's Midwifery: Haiti

Please follow this link to get some more information on Haiti and midwifery in Haiti.

an update from Haiti

I just had to share this link!

http://www.mamababyhaiti.org/the-last-few-weeks-have-been-busy-busy-busy-around-here-at-the-clinic/comment-page-1/#comment-1520

The most recent blog post from Dr. Zeenia. She is the Naturopathic doctor living at MamaBaby Haiti (and an Oregonian). She posted a few pictures and the second picture (of Julyssa) is the baby that I saw three times in our clinic that was suffering with severe malnutrition.

Look how beautiful she is! I never did photograph her while I was there, but I am happy to report that she has improved greatly! This makes me so happy!

Thanks Zeenia for the update!

Faith

I was asked to speak about my experiences in Haiti at my church last week. It was an interesting experience to plan my talk around the theme of faith. If the topic had been service it would have been so much easier and I would have been able to tell many stories!

But as usual the easy way isn't always the best. The challenge was an opportunity for me to see my own experiences in a different way.

The apostle Paul tells us: “… faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) As I was studying for my talk I learned that faith is a principal of action. And no greater example of that was my preparation to travel to Haiti.

I had no idea what I was going to see, feel or experience. I had to overcome a lot of fear to get there. It was easy at home, months before my departure, to make the commitment to go. But as my time came near I felt afraid and wondered what I was doing and why. In the presence of fear my faith was not able to grow, so I was learning to let go of that fear and move forward.

As I was traveling I had many moments that pushed me far outside of my comfort zone. Now in looking back I have reflected on this and realized that I was never really afraid, just uncomfortable. I was able to feel the power of my family and friends' prayers and trust that my own internal wisdom would be guided by the spirit and know of my safety and surety of what I was doing.

A proud mama moment when I read my youngest daughters blog and found this post:

With my mom being a midwife, this health unit of “birth” is hard to listen to. Biatches tryin to tell me you can’t have a breech baby vaginally? Or naturally?

Shut yo mouths.

I think it's time for me to consider contacting the school district to teach a unit on birth.

International Midwives Day

Today the midwifery community celebrated International Midwives Day by holding a rally on the steps of the State Capitol. It was very well organized by a committee of midwives.

The speakers were great. We heard from homebirth moms, dads and a sibling (my favorite being an articulate 13 year old girl who was born premature in the hospital, and witnessed her sister and brother born at home. She has got a future in public speaking!) We also heard from a couple of representatives who had homebirths, as well as some midwives and student midwives.

The keynote speaker was Jennifer Block who wrote the book "Pushed". This is my favorite book about the history of birth. She has never had a child herself but told the story of the first birth she attended and how it fueled her passion to research and write about birth practices. She told some sobering statistics. Currently the United States is ranked 50 out of 59 industrialized countries in maternal death. She also talked about the increasing rates of cesareans and how when hospitals are built or remodeled they are built to sustain a 50% cesarean rate. She stated that in relation to birth we are in a health care crisis! I've been trying to scream this fact for quite awhile now! I agree with Jennifer when she says the United States is OVERSPENDING and UNDERSERVING.

Attending the rally in Salem today was a positive experience for me and very inspiring.



We still need to get more consumers out there to support this cause. It was great to have so many people today but the vast majority were midwives. Real change can only happen when YOU the consumer stand up in masses and fight for your right to have a natural birth, breech birth, VBAC, twin birth, unmedicated birth, insurance paid birth, a gentle, non-invasive, midwife attended birth.

I have been carrying my last set of pictures around in my camera since I arrived home. I finally went to buy an SD card reader so I could load them on my computer. I should have done this before I went to Haiti but I didn't know such a thing existed until I was in Haiti. So now I have this handy little zip drive looking thing that I can put my SD card into and load them onto my computer, and I don't have to be upset that the card reader on my computer isn't working.

It is difficult to see, but this tree is FULL of mango's.

It is just amazing to see such an abundance of fruit.

And here is a banana tree with many bananas ready to be picked and eaten!

This sign just cracked me up the first time I saw it. I asked our driver to stop the next time we drove by so I could get a picture of it. He told me the picture on the right is the owner of the house and he loves Obama so he decided to make a mural of Obama and himself on his gate.

View from my bus leaving the bus station in Cap Haitien.
This is the outdoor waiting area at the station.

This is broken glass bottles that have been cemented in the wall to protect the property. I saw this while on the bus entering Haiti. I had never seen anything like this and thought "what a genius idea!". I spent the rest of my trip trying to get a good picture and as you can see I failed! I only spotted these while driving and I knew on my bus ride out of the country this was my lost shot, and this is what I got!