Our Charis Family

Anne Sokol

Victoria, Anne, Vitaliy and Skyla  Sokol

As a teen, I was a big dreamer. I planned on being a nurse-midwife-missionary to Russia and starting a home to help women so they wouldn’t have abortions. (The abortion statistics in the former Soviet Union are staggering, still today.) For years, every night before getting into bed, I knelt down and prayed for the ladies in Russia that I would help one day.

Almost fifteen years later now, and I’m not a nurse or midwife. In fact, I studied Creative Writing and English literature in college and grad school, though my dreams to be involved in birth surfaced periodically. I worked as a writer after college, and I begged God for a long time to allow me to be a missionary to Ukraine—part of the former Soviet Union and on the western border of Russia; during those years I visited here periodically in various missions capacities. When the time was perfect, God directed me to come to Ukraine as a single missionary to teach English in a small Bible institute. And that was how I met my husband, Vitaliy. He is Ukrainian (God is a bigger dreamer than I!), and we’ve been married almost four years. We have two small girls, Skyla and Victoria.

My mom is a crusader with a lot of initiative, and I’m glad to have grown up with her example. Birth is my crusade, and I’m thankfully in good company here at Charis! I hear sad stories from Ukrainian women here about their births. Being yelled at during labor—told to shut up, hurry up. Having to pay bribes for normal hospital services. Being separated from their babies. Being demeaned as women and mothers. Being alone in the most vulnerable time. Not to mention the pressure to abort if there are already “enough” kids in the family. I’ve talked to a Christian former L&D nurse here who cried over the circumstances she had to work in—being left alone in charge of nine laboring women, and other conditions which made it just impossible to do a good job. Another birth house worker told us (behind closed doors) that they get Cytotec from Russia and use it frequently to induce labor and never chart it because it’s illegal. Almost all of my Ukrainian friends who are birthing now, too, have had c-sections with their first babies, and here, they only allow three c-sections. No VBACs. Like my young friend Luda, eighteen-year-old beautiful bride of a pastor friend; they were dreaming to have lots of kids together. Her first birth ended as a c-section. For her second birth, the c-section found placenta accreta, and she was told—“no more children.”

So I’ve started crusading. First was a birth conference in 2007. Victoria was born here in our apartment in Kiev in February, 2007. Our midwife from Tennessee (who’d attended Skyla’s birth two years before) came here to assist with the birth. I’d already made contact with a few homebirth midwives in Kiev, so during her trip here, we planned a birth conference. We invited anyone interested in birth and didn’t publicize the “home” part because to assist home birth here is basically illegal. We had about three home birth midwives attend (we didn’t point out their presence), plus moms, former Ob’s, and just interested ladies. Our midwife did presentations about home birth in America, postpartum hemorrhage, and neonatal resuscitation. We also had a raffle to raise money for a crisis pregnancy center in Kharkov, Ukraine. It was a great day and they all asked for more. Our second conference is planned for this coming October. Also during that time, a Christian radio station had me in for an interview about this topic, so I got calls for quite a while from interested ladies.

The thought haunts me is that—somehow, at some time, people will start improving birth here in Ukraine. And if it’s not Christians who do this, who will it be? Buddhists, New Ager's, or atheists? We should be in the vanguard of birth advocacy, holding up the name of God—Ukrainians should know that there are Christians who are passionate about improving birth here! A church in a town not far from Kiev started a small home birth movement among themselves, and they are praying diligently for birth change here. They are led by a God-fearing woman named Nadya who had five babies in the birth houses, then birthed the last three at home—and they were influenced to start all this by an American midwife doing mission work here!

I had the CIMS Mother-Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative translated into Russian, and I try to give that out when I meet birth workers here, to see if anyone can get me into a birth house to help out. We had Jennifer Vanderlaan’s Lord of Birth Bible study translated (soon to be formally published), and soon we’ll have Doran Richards’ materials from Blessing God’s Way translated. I’m not the only birth advocate here. There are also now two birth houses with the Baby-Friendly label in Ukraine (not Christian activities, to my knowledge); I send my friends there! They allow VBACs, are very father-friendly, woman can birth in any position, don’t separate the mom/baby, encourage breastfeeding, etc. Changes are waiting to happen! But there are changes toward hi-tech, surgical birth, too. So it’s time to act.

Charis is a blessing to me. I’m so thankful to have home study combined with accountability and relationships. I don’t yet see all that God wants done here in Ukraine about birth, but I want to be ready to be used by Him. That’s my heart.

In God's Love, Anne