A Childbirth

Last night one of the women in my compound gave birth. The woman, Miamuna, is married to one of the many brothers of my host father. He is an electrician and they live together in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. When I first arrived in my village, Miamuna was here visiting. She was there for my first month before heading back to Burkina Faso. I really liked having her around because she speaks French and was very patient with my many questions. I was sad to see her go last December, but was excited when I arrived back to my village, after a trip down to Lome, in June and she was sitting there in my compound. When she stood up, I noticed she was pregnant, which explained why she was back to visit so soon. Since she has no extended family in Ouagadougou, there was no one to help her out throughout her pregnancy and after the birth, so she came back to Magna to be surrounded by women in her husband’s family who could support her.

Throughout the past few months, I’ve been asking Miamuna if she’s been going to the hospital for checkups and I verified multiple times that she planned to have the baby at the Mango hospital. The Mango hospital is only about 3km away from Magna and it takes about 5-10 minutes to get there on a moto. I’ve written about the hospital in previous blogs, so you know it’s definitely not a nice hospital and not somewhere I would want to have any medical treatment done, but still, it is a hospital with trained doctors and nurses, medical equipment, medicine, electricity, running water, and some level of sanitation- all of which are not available in my village. I had heard that many women in Magna still don’t go to Mango to give birth, even though it’s so close, so I kept posing questions to Miamuna to make sure she was planning to go to the hospital when the time came. Since I’ve read the statistics on maternal mortality in the developing world, I was understandably concerned about how Miamuna was approaching her pregnancy and childbirth. However, I was assured that the plan was to go to the hospital, which made me feel more at ease.

The past few day, it’s been pretty clear that Miamuna’s water could break at any moment. Therefore, last night, when I was woken up by the sound of my host dad’s moto at about 11pm, I assumed that he was taking Miamuna to the hospital to have the baby and I fell back asleep. At 1am, my host dad woke me up again, but this time he was calling my name at my door. When I responded, he said to come outside to see Miamuna and the baby. I was surprised that she had already come back from the hospital with the baby and when I expressed this, he explained that no, she was actually having the baby at that moment. He pointed to the room of his second wife and told me to go inside, because men aren’t allowed to. I was confused and said, “she’s having the baby HERE, why isn’t she at the hospital?”. He responded, telling me not worry because “a women is here to help who has her card.” What he meant was a local women who had received some sort of midwife training (and therefore had some card to prove it) was inside helping out. When I heard the moto a couple hours earlier, it was to go pick up the midwife from a nearby compound, not to bring Miamuna to the hospital. Anyways, I entered the room, which was dimly lit by a flashlight hanging from the wall. Inside were a few kids, my two host moms, my host grandma, the village midwife, and Miamuna. I recognized the village midwife as one of the old ladies that sometimes stops by my compound. Previously, I had asked around and heard there was a village woman trained to help with childbirth, but I had no idea it was this woman. Miamuna was lying naked on her back on the cement floor with no sheet, blanket, or pillow. The midwife had her hands inside her, so I couldn’t tell for a second if the baby was already born, but then I looked in the corner of the room that possessed a bundle of pagne (the fabric women wrap themselves in) and saw there was a little baby boy inside. I was motioned to sit next to the baby and grandma on the floor. The midwife was currently easing out the placenta, which was then put in a pot on the floor. There was blood all over the floor and once the placenta was removed, the midwife, with the help of my host moms, began to wipe it up with more pagne. After this was over, I was glad to see the midwife mixed a little bleach with water and used it to wipe down the floor some more. She then tied a pagne around Miamuna to absorb further blood and then used a razor to cut off some of the umbilical cord still attached to the baby. After this was over, Miamuna was made to sit up and eat a little food before she was led to her room and allowed to sleep along with her baby. The midwife packed up her things (consisting of a plastic container with gauze, tape, bleach, gloves, and a razor) and hopped on my host dad’s moto for a ride home. Then, everyone else went back to bed and it was all over.

Luckily, there were no problems with Miamuna’s labor and both she and the baby came out of it alive and healthy. However, I’m still baffled that they didn’t want to drive the 10 minutes on my host dad’s moto to get to the Mango hospital like they had planned. Although the village midwife did a good job, if even a small thing had gone wrong, I don’t know how much the midwife would have been able to do, especially compared to a hospital staffed with more highly trained doctors and nurses. At the same time, while I personally don’t understand it, it’s also true that back in America, where we have some of the best medical care in the world, some couples decide to forego the modern hospital and have a home birth. However, the difference is that in the States, a home birth is usually a carefully planned out decision based on research about different childbirth philosophies whereas in Miamuna’s case it was a last second “practical” decision made because it was nighttime and having her just give birth at home seemed easier.

I’m really glad everything went smoothly and I’m also really glad my host dad woke me up to be able to see some of the process. It was interesting for me to observe, especially considering it was probably similar to the way the majority of the world’s births occur. Additionally, being present also made me feel closer to the women in my host family and it was nice to know that they feel I’m enough a part of the family that I should be in the room when a child is born.