Picture this, your favorite world racer Brieanne, deep in an African village, wearing a long skirt and chacos, delivering a baby on a garbage bag.
A couple of us with medical backgrounds on my team had the opportunity to go to a village out in the bush and check out their medical facility. It was a two hour drive away and we had to be there by 5am because our host was helping with drilling a well and they were starting that early. With that information we decided to leave the night before and tent outside the clinic when we got there. The drive there was dark and very bumpy, we were driving on dirt roads for an hour and a half before we came upon the village. We got there late at night, the clinic director gave us a tour of the facility in the dark, we met an early stage laboring mom, set up our tents, and tried to get some sleep.
I slept for a few hours and woke up terrified to the sound of pigs running around thinking they were going to attack me in my tent . I then stayed up for two hours lying on the ground of my tent wide awake while two of my teammates went and checked on the laboring mom, at this time she still wasn’t progressing and they were debating sending her to a hospital that was farther away except nobody had a car in the village to take her. I fell asleep for one more hour and woke up at 5:00 am from the sound of the big drilling machine getting ready to leave and lots of men talking. Looks like it was time for us to start our day. We packed up our tents and threw them in a locked room, hugged our host goodbye and started planning what we were going to do.
This clinic is the only clinic for 21,000 people and is the only labor and delivery center for many many miles. When a woman is getting far along in her pregnancy they move into a women’s shelter type house on the property to make sure that when they go into labor that they are near to clinic to have a safe delivery. They have to bring everything they need for the month that they stay there including food, cleaning products, and anything else that they may need. We ended up bringing things for the moms that were staying there to give as gifts, so at 5:00 am we decided to separate all the goods into gift bags. We sat on the ground of a hot bedroom and sorted out goods such as little dried fish, peanut butter, bread, shema, laundry bars, Vaseline, and pads. We made 8 of the big goodie bags and smaller ones with leftovers to give to moms that had recently gave birth that were still staying there.
We walked around to the room with the moms who had their babies the day before and gave them some of the small gift bags and visited with them and their babies. We also made them some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast. Every single baby that was born that day had been a girl and none of them had names yet. Turns out you really gotta get to know your baby before you bless them with a name.
After that we went to the shelter house to meet and hang out with the pregnant moms. The house that they were staying in was very basic, it was just three really big empty rooms with blankets and dishes on the floor. We sat with all the women and their moms outside on the front porch and talked to them through broken English, prayed with them, and gave them the gifts. They were so excited and loved getting new things. We said goodbye to them and headed back across the street to the clinic.
It was late morning and there were about 80 pregnant women waiting in line to get their prenatal checkups. We asked the nurse if we could observe some of the checkups and she was so excited for us to want to learn about how they do things. After watching 3 appointments she told us it was our turn to run the appointments so she sat back and gave us patients to work up. It was so fun meeting all these women and getting to exam them and there unborn babies. After doing multiple exams we heard that the laboring mom from earlier was finally starting to progress.
We went to the labor and delivery room and talked to the two nurses for a few minutes and then they told us that we could glove up and help deliver the baby. It was a good thing that we brought medical supplies to donate because if we didn’t then none of us would have gloves because they didn’t have any. When I’m explaining this your probably thinking of your typical labor and delivery room from the states but it was far from that. The moms have to bring all the materials they need to give birth such as towels, gloves, a basin to take your placenta with you, bleach to clean up, and umbilical cord clamp, and even the black garbage bag you lay on while giving birth. Anyways we put some gloves on and jumped right in, this was the first time I experienced a birth and wow I’m speechless. This mom was 18 years old, all alone, and didn’t make a single noise the whole time she was pushing. Half was through I had to step away and turn around because I started bawling my eyes out. The male nurse looked at me and asked what the heck was wrong with me and I told him that it was just so beautiful. All the other girls started crying when they saw me crying so it was just a room full of emotions. When she finally got the baby out the baby wasn’t very responsive so they hung it upside down and gave it a few good smacks and gave it some more attention and the baby was finally perking up and was responding well. The mom has to get internal and external stitches without any local anesthetic and I swear that was more painful for her than actually giving birth, it was hard to watch her in that much pain. She eventually got to hold her baby and it was such a beautiful connection that ope yup of course I start crying again. While she was holding the baby we helped the nurses clean up everything and then it was time for us to leave. We really didn’t wanna leave and we felt like we could stay their for days but our host was leaving so we had to go as well. We said some hard goodbyes and headed back home. This was by far the best ministry day on the race. Honestly what is more amazing than witnessing the beauty of childbirth.
I still need to fundraise $8,455 by the beginning of December so if you’d like to hear more stories like these then please consider donating to keep me on the field!
Much Love,
Brieanne
