Charis Around the World

Childbirth in Kenya

by Jannekah Guya

Jannekah Guya and her blessed family

Baby Alvisi was the happiest 4-week-old little girl I’ve ever seen in my life.  I didn’t know a baby as young and as tiny as her could smile continuously and respond to any and all attention and love she could get with a joy so pure.  This precious, innocent little baby girl had no way of understanding how very uncertain her future is.  She wasn’t yet feeling the pain and rejection of knowing that after giving birth, her mother had slipped out of the hospital in the night and in an instant left little Alvisi abandoned, orphaned, and alone in the great big frightening world that had only just become her home.

I met little Alvisi right around Christmas time last year.  My sister and I were volunteering in the abandoned baby center in the biggest hospital here in Eldoret, Kenya, where I live with my husband and our two young children.  Tragically, always around the holidays, the numbers of abandoned babies skyrocket.  At that time, Alvisi was one of sixteen abandoned babies under six weeks old in that hospital alone.  All sixteen of these precious little ones were crammed into two portacribs and were being cared for by three or four overwhelmed staff members.  One infant would cry, and someone would pick her up, change her, feed her, and lay her back in the portacrib so they could do the same with another crying newborn.  At night, when the staff at the abandoned baby center go home, things become much, much worse.  The babies are left to the mercy of the nursing staff in the hospital.  Nurses in Kenya are notorious for lack of compassion, and sometimes even cruelty.  The babies are often left alone, crying all night long and when they are many, sometimes they die because of negligence.  Yes, even in one of the biggest teaching hospitals in the country.

All of these things are devastating to me, as I’m sure they are to you.  I began to pray and ask God what could be done to save these innocent babies (Proverbs 31:8&9).  He began to draw my attention to the fact that I was looking for solutions to the problem that already existed, but why were so many precious, beautiful little babies being abandoned in the first place?

When you speak with any Kenyan woman about issues of pregnancy and childbirth, a lot of emotions come to the surface, but not the kind of emotions you might think.  Instead of joy, excitement, curiosity, and nervousness, every Kenyan woman I’ve ever talked to expresses fear, terror, shame, and embarrassment.  If you can find a woman who is bold enough to share her birth story with you, it will most likely be absolutely horrifying.  There are very few educational resources for young mothers, and those that exist are hard to find and expensive.  So, first time mothers are terrified by the fear of the unknown and the horror stories they’ve heard from their friends.  Multiparas are terrified because of their own previous horrific experiences.

At the most vulnerable time of a woman’s life, and the life of her baby for that matter, a Kenyan hospital is a terrifying, intimidating, overwhelming place to be.  The hospitals and clinics are so over crowded it’s not uncommon for two laboring women to share a tiny single bed.  It’s not unheard of for women to give birth on the hard cold floor.  Husbands are not allowed to be with their wives when they’re laboring or giving birth, and because of cultural attitudes, refuse to be there even on the very rare occasions that they are allowed.  A worried and afraid sister, cousin, friend or mother might come to the hospital, but usually never gathers the courage (or gets the permission) to actually leave the waiting area to be with the laboring mother.  The mother usually spends her labor alone and terrified, apart from the woman she may be sharing a bed with of course, and the occasional nurse who might poke her head in or rebuke the terrified woman for making too much noise.  A nurse will commonly slap a laboring mother or tell her to shut up, and if the mother really displeases anyone on the nursing staff, she’ll be purposely neglected as punishment.  The concept of a patient’s rights are humorous to medical staff, and though the Kenyan constitution does provide for patient rights, in Kenya people operate by the mentality that it’s not a law unless it’s enforced.  The attitude is that doctors and nurses know all and the patient is utterly ignorant of all things having to do with their own bodies.  I have a friend who went in for a routine prenatal exam and they told her she was dehydrated and hooked her up to an IV.  She was soon feeling very strange and demanded to know what was in the IV.  They laughed off her demand, telling her it was no concern of hers.  When they were hooking her up to the second bag of fluids, she became hysterical and insisted they tell her what was going on.  Finally, they admitted they were inducing her and she delivered her five-pound baby boy five hours later.

When the mother is fully dilated and ready to push, the nurses call the doctor who joins them and gives the mother a very large, routine episiotomy as the nurses do everything in their power to speed things along.  They always apply crushing fundal pressure and often tell the mother that the baby will die if she doesn’t hurry up and push it out to try and make her go faster.  And when it is all over, the baby is whisked away and the mother is left emotionally and physically exhausted and traumatized.  Sometimes things don’t even go that well.

Another friend of mine had her baby an hour after she arrived at the hospital, before I could get there to be with her during the birth.  I arrived to find the nurses panicking because the placenta wasn’t detaching.  I asked if the mother could nurse the baby and maybe squat and the nurses scornfully laughed at me and told me to wait in the other room with the baby.  Instead, they hooked her up to something along the lines of pitocin and left the new mother to suffer, contracting and bleeding alone for two more hours before they finally called the doctor.  The doctor came, gave her an enormous episiodomy, reached all the way into her uterus and pulled the placenta off and out with his hand.  They then told her she wouldn’t stop bleeding until she urinated and forced her to walk to the bathroom, where of course, she collapsed and they had to carry her back to bed.  It’s estimated that 6,150 women die in Kenya every year due to pregnancy and childbirth related causes.  My guess is that the number is much, much higher.  Half of the women who die in childbirth in Kenya die from bleeding to death.

I’m sharing all of this with you, not to paint a bad picture of Kenya, this country I love so much.  Because the reality is that Kenya is a breathtakingly beautiful place full of beautiful people, most of whom are creative, loving, Godly, hospitable, generous, passionate, innovative, joyful, bright, kind, and so much more (Acts 10:34&35).  But it is through these things that God began to reveal to me why it might not be so far-fetched for a woman who struggles in life and in fear through her pregnancy, and then has such a traumatic birth experience, to have enough of an emotional lapse with her new baby to consider leaving it behind.  After all, the struggle doesn’t end in the hospital for this woman.  Maybe she has six other hungry, unschooled children at home already.  Maybe her husband is a drunkard or maybe he’s abandoned her.  Maybe, she has no hope.  Maybe she doesn’t know that a baby is a gift from Heaven.  Maybe she doesn’t know God has a plan.  Maybe she doesn’t know that Jesus can carry them through anything.  Maybe if she knew, that would change everything (Jeremiah 29:11).

Through this process of revelation, God did a work in my heart and I knew I had to do something.  Now that I knew and was beginning to understand, I couldn’t sit idly by and leave the women and babies of Kenya to suffer.  The only resources I had were my own experiences giving birth to my children, a couple books I had read during my pregnancies, and the Lord.  I began to openly talk with pregnant Kenyan friends about pregnancy and birth.  At first, they thought I was absolutely crazy and delusional to describe birth as beautiful, empowering, amazing, and wonderful.  It may be the Kenyan belief that white women have no pain in childbirth is true after all.  But as we talked more, they began to understand what birth is really meant to be and the incredible way God designed our bodies to do this miracle that we have the privilege and honor of being a part of.  I lent them my books and they began to feel safe talking with me and asking questions.  They began to believe, and hope began to replace fear (1 John 4:18).

You see, in Kenya, pregnancy and birth are considered very, very private topics, and it’s often considered taboo to talk openly about them.  Though it is considered one of the highest honors to be a parent in Kenya, pregnancy is looked upon almost as a shameful thing, and most Kenyan women do everything they can to hide their growing bellies from everyone.  When my husband and I found out we were pregnant for the first time, we called his mother (who is a Kenyan) to tell her the exciting news.  She thought we were calling to say I’d already given birth because it’s so unusual to talk about it before the baby is born.  This greatly adds to the tremendous fear women have surrounding these issues.  There is so much that is unknown and misunderstood, and with no way to freely talk about it and ask questions, the fear and misconceptions continue to grow.  Most Kenyan women don’t go for regular prenatal visits, and many never go at all.  But even if they do, it’s of no help to the emotional turmoil they’re going through.  The basic prenatal visit consists of being weighed, blood pressure taken, maybe listening to the baby’s heartbeat, and that’s about it.  Most doctors are men, and while they are often more compassionate than the few female doctors, they are still men and it is culturally unnatural for a Kenyan woman to talk about these “private” things with any man, even her own husband.  The husband’s part in all of this is usually simply to pay the bill and pick her up from the hospital once she and the baby are discharged.  He’ll then take her home on the back of his bike, or escort her to a rickety, bumpy, overcrowded public van, or they’ll walk.

Many first-time mothers don’t even know what to do with the new baby once they get him home, and if there is no older female relative near-by to ask, the terrifying experience continues for the mother.  One dear friend of mine rushed her new baby to the hospital the first time the baby spit up because she thought it was a sign the baby was deathly ill!  Much more tragically, we know of a mother who had trouble breastfeeding her new baby and after six days the baby starved to death, or perhaps died of related causes.  I was told of a mother who just last month was force-feeding porridge to her four-month-old baby, and the baby suffocated and died (Hosea 4:6).

So I began to imagine what a huge difference could be made just by giving the little that I had (John 6:9).  If I could be someone women could finally trust to talk to and ask questions of, to pray with, and most importantly, to be there when they were laboring, couldn’t that radically change their birth experience, the way they thought of themselves and ultimately what they thought of their babies?  If I were there for a mother emotionally, spiritually, and physically through her pregnancy, birth, and even after she went home, if she knew they could call me and I’d be there for her any time, wouldn’t that make it much less likely for her to just sneak out of the hospital at night, leaving her new baby behind, or for the baby to die the first weeks and months of life outside the womb?

I was encouraged to look into doula training, and during a short visit to the U.S., God provided through dear friends for me to attend doula classes in Seattle, Washington, where I’m originally from. Being better equipped, I am able to help pregnant, laboring, and postpartum Kenyan women even more, but after encountering situations like some of the ones mentioned above, I realized there is only so much I can do to help and bring change with the limited knowledge and credentials I have.  So the next step in my journey was to establish a relationship with some of the traditional birth attendants I had only heard rumor of.  The Kenyan government is trying to “phase out” traditional birth attendants in the country so that women give birth in the “safer,” “modern” hospitals, rather than “risking their lives” to the ancient, “outdated” practice of giving birth in a mud hut.  To them, that is a step backward.  However, as you can imagine, many Kenyan women prefer traditional birth attendants and feel safer with them.  Besides the fact that some women just live too far from the nearest health clinic, and some simply can’t afford “modern medicine.”  I have heard many stories of women dying while their family begs the unsympathetic doctor to act, but he refuses for lack of payment.  Or of women giving birth on the doorstep of the clinic because they didn’t have the money to pay.  If they are “lucky” enough to be treated without paying, they will literally be held prisoner in the hospital until the full bill is paid.

Every traditional birth attendant I’ve met has learned the art from her mother or her grandmother.  I’ve never met a birth attendant who has completed any formal training or who has even finished the equivalent of elementary school.  However, women often feel much safer with them than in the clinics and hospitals, despite the negative stigma that surrounds traditional birth attendants.  While it is often truly a better birth experience for the mother and the baby with a traditional birth attendant, there are still many dangers as well.  While the traditional birth attendant does not practice many of the negative routines you’ll find in a Kenyan clinic, there is a major lack of understanding in basic hygiene and sanitation.  There are also many false cultural beliefs and practices that can prove harmful to the mother and/or baby.  The AIDS epidemic also greatly complicates the situation, as does the fact that traditional birth attendants have very little knowledge or tools to handle an emergency.

These issues deepened my conviction and resolve to do more, which means I have to learn so much more.  It is my desire to train to be a midwife so that I can help Kenyan women have safe, beautiful, fearless, dignified, empowering birth experiences.  My ultimate dream is one day to open a clinic and midwifery training center here in Kenya.  A place where young mothers can come and talk, learn, ask questions, learn to help each other, and be empowered to work together as women and mothers.  A place where they can come for counseling, prayer, education, and proper caring, compassionate, safe health care.  It is also my dream to make it a place where traditional birth attendants can come to learn and see how they can improve their own art.  It’s impossible to go into a traditional birth attendant’s mud hut and tell her what she should do differently when her great-great grandmother did it this way and she’s been doing it that way for twenty years herself.  But if she could come and see for herself ways that her work can produce even better results, I truly believe it could make a positive difference.  My hope is that we can have midwives from the U.S. and around the world rotating on short-term missions to come teach the local Kenyan midwives and mothers at the center, and in that way, everyone would be learning from one another.  I think that would please God and that it would make a tremendous impact on everyone involved (Zephaniah 3:9).

But first things first.  We can’t change the world until we change ourselves, which means I need a lot of training and experience in order to do what I believe God is calling me to do!  My husband says, God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.  After knocking on a lot of doors, God finally led me to Charis, where I met some amazing women who are just as excited about what God has in store for Kenya as I am.  We are praying that He’ll make a way for me to be able to learn through their program as I work with and learn from Kenyan doctors and traditional birth attendants locally.  I’m hoping and praying that this is the next step in my journey.  In the meantime, I’m reading every good material I can find on the subject and trying to learn as much as I can as I wait on the Lord to make the next step possible (Matthew 25:21).

Please join me in prayer for Kenya and her beautiful women and children.  God can use even us to make a difference if we just trust Him.  He uses the ordinary to do extraordinary things.  That is His delight.

“Brothers, think of what you were when you were called.  Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.  But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him.  It is because of HIM that you are in Christ Jesus Who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” - 1 Corinthians 1:26-30
 

This is a group of traditional birth attendants gathered from different villages
to be taught by the American midwife, Sherry Dress, who came to Kenya to help Jannekah deliver her son this past June.

Sherry Dress and Jannekah helping a Kenyan woman give birth in a birth attendant’s mud hut.

      
A Kenyan woman and her baby Jannekah helped through pregnancy, labor, and postpartum.
Very special to Jannekah as this was the very first woman she helped in Kenya.

Dear Charis Family,

The first time I talked with Jannekah, I sensed in her the “Charis Heart”. She is truly a sister and I’m not sure I can even begin to communicate my excitement in having her as part of our “family”. I believe her vision has been birthed from the same part of Father God’s heart as the Charis vision and I am convinced that our connection is a divine appointment. As a result, I asked her to share with all of you about her vision for improving childbearing practices in her community.

I know that when God gives a person a vision for something, he also provides everything needed to bring it to pass. If something that she shared here has touched your heart, please consider helping her in this great work she is doing. If you would like to help Jannekah, who lives in a severely impoverished place, to cover her tuition, please let us know. Any amount would be a great blessing. There is a midwifery scholarship fund to help people like Jannekah get the education they need so they can make a difference in their communities. The fund is currently very small, but if we all give a little, it will grow to the size needed to offer Jannekah either a partial or full scholarship.

To give you an idea of how just a little bit can make a big difference, I have broken it down for you:
If we raise $10,800.00, Jannekah will have a full scholarship for her tuition. That seems big, but it is only 30 families giving $10/month for the next 3 years… or 15 families giving $20/month. Or, for those who wish to sponsor one month of Jannekah’s tuition, 36 families giving a one-time donation of $300 would completely cover her tuition. Most Americans waste more money than that, even in this suffering economy. I believe it is completely possible to raise the funds! God is a GOOD Father and he cares deeply about the people of Kenya! Spread the word to your friends who care about the world’s women and babies! Perhaps your small group or church would like to sponsor a month ($300) or a quarter ($900). Together we can help improve the lives of precious Kenyan women and babies.

Thank you,
Kristin Schuchmann
Executive Director, Charis Childbirth, Inc.

To donate to Jannekah’s scholarship, make your check payable to Charis Childbirth, include a separate note designating it for Jannekah’s tuition, and send it to
Charis Childbirth, Inc.
P.O. Box 6900
North Port, FL 34290
 

Our International Charis Family
Your stories from around the world touch us and we pray for your safety.
Thanks, Love and Blessings to every one of you!

 'Behold, I will bring them from the north country, And gather them from the ends of the earth,
 Among  them the blind and the lame, The woman with child and The one who labors with child,  together,
 A great throng shall return there...And My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, says the LORD.'
 Jeremiah 31:8, 14~~~
©2010 Charis Childbirth Services, All Rights Reserved
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November 2010