It was just another day in Swaziland. A bunch of us girls were sitting around,
doing a whole lot of nothing, when Pastor Gift drove up with a couple of our
boys. They casually walked in and extended
an invitation to us girls to accompany Pastor Gift to take a lady in labour to
the hospital, which was an hour away. At
first nothing happened. We all kind of
looked at them, not sure if we understood correctly. Then everyone started moving at once, and six
of us ended up going: Kelly R., Kimi, Hannah, Cori, Tiffany and me.
We all hopped in White Chocolate (Pastor Gift’s van), and
were off to pick up the star of our show. On the way, Pastor Gift gave us a little background information on the
situation. The lady we were picking up
is around 25 years old. She is a
prostitute, and she does not know who the father of her child is. We also found out that this was her fifth
child, and all the others had been given up for adoption. She is HIV positive. Her mother used to live the same kind of
lifestyle, but then she came to know the Lord and is very judgemental of her
daughter, who took the same path as her.
Let me set up the scene for you. Not one of us had any idea of what we were
doing, obviously. After Pastor Gift
debriefed us on the situation, we did the one thing we do know how to do; we
started praying. We prayed for the
mother, for the baby, and for safety and protection.
When we got to the house, a blanket was laid down in the
back seat and our “patient,” who was in A LOT of pain, got in the van. We all turned professional and started
drawing knowledge from every movie or T.V. show we have ever seen where there
has been a similar situation. We asked
the lady her name (which I forget, or really never knew. I am really bad at pronouncing Saswati names)
and a few general questions to get to know her a little, then introduced ourselves. There was a pink rag tied around her stomach,
and we asked her cousin, who also came with us, what it was for. She didn’t know, so we assume it was to try
and keep the baby in. With that over, we
tried to decide what to do.
A contraction hit, so we all started breathing with
her. Kimi was kind enough to start
singing “We Will Rock You” as we all were breathing. A couple of us gave her our hands to squeeze,
and Tiff started singing. That lucky
woman. Not many ladies get to experience
the joy of labour in the back seat of a van with six complete strangers who
have no idea what they’re doing hovering over her, laughing and joking and
giggling and saying over and over again what a crazy situation this is.
We continued on, waiting for the contractions to come so we
could “help” her through them. During
the second one, we decided that it would be a good idea to time how far apart
they were. We soon realized that there
was less than two minutes between the contractions. Not good. The poor woman was in A LOT of pain. Kimi was sitting at her feet, and we asked if she could see
anything. Kimi said not really, there
was just a lot of fluid. We worked
through a couple more contractions, and then the mother said that she wanted to
push. We did not want her to push. About half an hour after we started driving,
a massive contraction hit. Kimi said
that there was still nothing down there, and she didn’t look dilated. I watched as the mother’s stomach moved in a
crazy way and tightened up, and then she started to push. Her cousin basically jumped on top of her and
started pushing on her stomach. We all
started yelling “push!” because we didn’t know what else to do, and a little
baby girl came into the world! Right
there in the back seat of White Chocolate, with all of us watching. Wow. Talk about a miracle!
as the poor mother and cousin worked to deliver the afterbirth. Tiff was also recruited to push on the mother’s
stomach to try and get it out. Pastor
Gift, who had been yelling instructions to us while driving, ordered us to
close all the windows and keep the baby warm. We literally had nothing to wrap the baby in, so Hannah kindly took off
the t-shirt she had thrown on over her tank top before leaving and gave it to
the baby to be wrapped in.
pulled over the side of the road, saying that we had a flat tire. He pulled out the spare and went to work
changing the tire, only to discover that the spare tire was flatter than the
first one. During this process, we asked
the mother what she was going to name her baby. She said that she didn’t know, and she told us that we could name her
baby for her. The word that had been
rolling around in my head since we left the house was “Hope.” We all agreed that it was the perfect name
for this new little life.
tire, but no one would stop. We could
actually see the hospital from where we were on the road, so he decided to drive
there on his rim. We pulled right up to
the maternity unit door of the hospital and then sat waiting for someone to
come help us. We sat there for quite
awhile before a nurse finally came out. The first thing she did was chastise us for only having a t-shirt to
wrap the baby in. Sorry lady. We weren’t actually expecting that the baby
would be born on the way to the hospital. Then the nurse cut the umbilical cord, pulled out the rest of the
afterbirth, and took the baby inside, leaving us to help the poor mother in.
What will happen to baby Hope? I don’t really know. Pastor Gift had a potential family set up to
adopt her, but it wasn’t official. He said
that if Hope stays with her mother, she won’t make it. Her mother literally has nothing and cannot
afford to keep her baby. Pastor Gift
told us about a center the baby could go to until a family is found to adopt
her. The situation seems pretty grim,
but I honestly felt none of that. I
believe that there is hope for our little Hope, and that the situation will
work out. We prayed life and freedom
over that baby, and we believe that she will bring Hope to Swaziland. It was so easy for me to see how incredibly
much God loves that baby, and I know without a doubt that God is going to take
care of her.
