Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip Day 8

Haiti Day 8 Friday January 30th 2015

We had a good final full day here.  I started out working with the students in labor and delivery.  It started out slow and then we had a bunch or labor checks come in that went in labor. As we were preparing to leave, a women walked in leaning on two men looking like she was in advanced labor.  But when we got her on the table her blood pressure was 200/130 and she a bad headache,  vision changes and liver pain  so within 5 minutes the students had an IV in her and they were pushing IV Mag by hand (see the pic to the right) since they have no IV pumps.  They then have to count drips to make sure this high risk medication is running at the correct rate. When I asked how far along she was and did they get baby heart tones, they said they didn't know yet.    They have seen to many women come in having eclamptic seizures so they don't waste time with basic facts when seconds matter. They sure do things different here, but it works,  she hadn't had a seizure as of the time we left and we did find the baby's heart beat.
 
  We then walked home from the hospital spent a couple of hours at the MFH house with all of the students doing case studies.  Nadene did a great job of making them really work through the medical thought process.  Teaching someone to instinctively think like a midwife isn't easy!

To decompress a bit before we get ready to head home, we drove to Bassan Zim a beautiful area with a fantastic waterfall and some caves that a group of young Haitian boys guided us through.  It was a great afternoon. Then tonight we packed and played a final card game of Aw Shaw.  We are leaving 7am to drive to Port-au-Prince to start to fly home.  There were protests and road blocks near Port-au-Prince today,  so we are allowing extra time in case we run into delays. It's been a great week and I treasure the friendships I have made along with the amazing people I have cared for this week.  Can't wait for my next trip!

Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip Day 7

Haiti Day 7 Thursday January 29th 2015

Today was a good more relaxing day, but I am getting a bit tired of the long Yukon trips.  Dr. Steve, Camille, Genette, Magdella and our interpreter Frankie and I drove 2 hours to Cabestro to meet with 30 local Matrones to educate them about the upcoming Matrone 20 week free education program MFH will be starting this spring.   They all seemed eager for the program and it will really help to educate these traditional birth attendants (who surprisingly were 3/4 men and most elderly).   They will know about how to have a clean, safe birth and each will be given clean birth kits. Plus they will be encouraged to recognize the signs of danger in pregnancy and birth and to help their women transfer the 2 hours to Hinche to be seen at the hospital. They also teach how many cultural traditions can endanger moms and babies and why they should discourage things like rubbing charcole on the umbilical cord(can lead to neonatal teatnus and having new moms sit over a steaming pot to cleanse themselves(can lead to severe burns) 

 On the same site is a building that MFH is hoping to turn into a birthcenter in the next year.  It would enable the local women to have a safe place to birth and would be staffed by MFH midwives and volunteers. There was a good article about it published this week.  http://www.catholicvirginian.org/archive/2015/2015vol91iss7/pages/article2.html

This afternoon we took motor taxies to visit the local girls orphanage at Mason Fortunae.  The girls were all very sweet and showed us their crazy jumping rope skills.  We played them some music and danced around and just had a good time with them.

 Fresh little bananas and mangos from the trees on the property.  So much better than what we get at home!

Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip - Day 6

Haiti Trip Day 6 - January 28th 2015

We had a good day here.  We left bright and early for the super rough, nauseating 26 mile (2 hours) drive to Boc Banic near the DR boarder.  Above is a picture of the church where we held the clinic.  The mobile clinic on Monday had over 100 women show up!  They travel remote roads to reach 16 different sites monthly to provide care and education.  These women walk hours to get to these monthly clinics. It is the only care available to to them.  The closest hospital is the one here in Hinche,  2 hours away.  They then patiently wait hours in the heat to be seen.  We saw 40 women today and about half of them it was their first visit.   They ranged from 10 weeks to 41 weeks and barely any of them had any idea of their due date or even a due month. It really does test my assessment skills!  We even had one lady who was 30 weeks with a blood pressure of 190/120 and +3 protein in her urine.  But it looks like she has had the same issues even earlier in her pregnancy, so more likely she has chronic high blood pressure resulting in some kidney damage so not likely pre-eclampsia.  We made the hard decision to leave her there with blood pressure medication and hope she is okay until next month when we could transport her back here to deliver.  If we had brought her back today the Haitian OB would have induced her and her baby would not have survived. 

Dr. Steve MFH's medical director was along with us today, so we had the luxury of being able to do basic ultrasounds with the hand held sono unit on a couple of women.  

 This is a home that was next to the clinic site. And some of the kids and goats that were hanging around and keeping an eye on us throughout the day. 

  

This is a very nice medical building that is sitting empty.  We were there scouting out options for a future birth center in this town.  But this place does not have running water or electricity so those would be huge expenses/barriers to making it work.  It is so sad to see so many buildings like this and many nice school buildings sitting unused.  Organizations come in and have grand ideas and build these structures, but don't make any plans on how to sustain them.  If they don't budget for staff or teachers then they simply sit empty and go to waste.  

It was great to get to pass out a Days For Girls pack to everyone we saw today.  It is a huge issue that girls/women miss up to a week of school/work each month due no way to conceal their cycle.  These handmade  packs give them so much freedom! It is exciting that something we take for granted can change these girls lives!  

Days for Girls International | Sustainable Feminine Hygiene www.daysforgirls.org

Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip Day 5

Haiti Day 5 Tuesday  January 27th 2015

Today was an interesting day. I started off working with my student in the post partum unit.  Women here typically get sent home 6 hours after delivery, but if that time is after dark then they stay until morning since it is not safe to travel after dark. So that makes for a lot of morning discharges. The awesome picture to the right, of one of our students assessing a post partum mom and her baby was taken by Ann Schaeffer CNM one of the wonderful volunteers I had the pleasure to work with this week. 

We took care of one woman who was 3 months pregnant who came in yesterday with a fever. Today she had no fever but was very altered mentally. The doctor ended up treating her for malaria, glad I decided to start my malaria treatment before I left.  

Once we finished with all of the post partum discharges we headed over to labor to help out.  One lady who was being induced for severe pre-eclampsia with her 7th baby was so sick. We found her with her IV not running.  They were unable to find the baby's heart beat this morning and had to inform her as she was getting ready to push that her baby had died.  Her lowest blood pressure after delivery of her full term stillborn son and multiple iv medications was 200/130, which is crazy high.   I just pray she doesn't stroke out and die over night.   The saddest thing was in Haitian culture a dead baby is seen as a curse and they don't want to see it or have anything to do with it.  So I wrapped this perfect little 7 pound boy up in a little blue delivery towel and just held him in the hall until they insisted I place him in a discarded cardboard box and sent it off with the janitor to dispose of.  It can be so hard to deal with the cultural differences sometimes, so different from our own, but I know these mom's still morn the loss of their babies, just in different ways.

This afternoon we took the motorbikes over to the Azil feeding center/orphanage.  I love this place even though the kids here break my heart as they are so desperate for attention.  We got to help feed the group of twenty 9-18 month olds who all sat lined up waiting to eat since they only get fed at 10am and 3pm.  We got lots of good cuddle time in there today.  

 

This little guy was climbing all over the place and was full of smiles.  He loved being held!

Some pics I took on our mototaxi ride through Hinche

Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip Day4

Haiti Day 4 Monday January 26, 2015 Well tonight we finally got Internet back up.  Seems like a silly thing to be worried about in Haiti, but it is so nice to be able to connect back home a bit.  I got to Skype with Josh and the kids for a while tonight so that was fun.    Today, Ann and I were working with the MFH students in labor and delivery.   Boy was that place hopping today!   We were working with 2 midwifery students but there were also 4 RN students and 4 auxiliary nursing students all buzzing around the cramped area with 4 little exam tables and torn shower curtains separating them. In addition to helping the students Ann and I both got to catch a baby of our own too.  At one point there were so many laboring patients that we had to quickly get one mom off of the exam table so the one that arrived crawling on her hands and knees in the doorway could have a place to deliver.    We were happy to start off  the day with a trickle of running water at the hospital, but that was gone by the time I had to try to clean up after my delivery.   Haitians make do with what they have.  Most everything in the unit is broken.  IV poles are missing half of their wheels, and drawers only half way close.  Most of their sterile instruments are far from sterile.  Most women are to hot and exhausted to want to cuddle their baby after delivery so their babies end up sitting on the scale or counter top waiting for them to be ready to take them and walk to the post partum area.  After a very busy morning we hopped on the back of a motorbike to ride home for lunch.  We then spent the afternoon helping Pat put donated new women's underwear into the 200 hand made Days For Girls packs that she brought. They are kits for girls and women here to use when they are on their cycle.  Otherwise most don't have access to pads or underwear of any sort and will miss lots of school and work due to no way to conceal the bleeding.  We are so excited to get to educate the women on these washable pads and liners and hand them out! Such a simple thing to help girls to get an education.  We spent the evening all swapping birth stories and comparing practices and of course a little rum and coke and lots of laughing.

Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip Day 3

Below is a video of the graduating Matrones singing about good handwashing tecnique.  They use a lot of songs to teach since many can not read or write.  Haiti Day 3 Sunday  January 25th,  Today we all got up early to pack 11 of us into the Yukon (at one point we had as many of 15 of us packed in!)  for a VERY bumpy 2 hour (27 mile) drive over "roads" to get to Saltadore a small village near the Dominican Republic boarder for the  gradation of the 3rd class of Matrones.   Matrones are traditional birth attendants and they deliver most of the babies in Haiti and prior to this program  they have no formal training and just learn from doing.   This 20 week program Midwives for Haiti offers teaches the basics of hand washing, and to look for signs of danger in pregnancy so they can attempt to transfer at risk women to a hospital.  Just last week one of the matrones from an earlier class recognized a woman's belly seemed to large and she found her a way to travel the 2 hours to Hinche.  Thankfully she did since she ended up having a c-section for TRIPLETS!  With out this extra training and a way to encourage them to recognize at risk patients and get them help, I don't want to even think of what would have happened for that birth.     After the rough drive through large creeks and lots of dirt and rocks,  we sat through a very hot 2 hour Catholic church service.  The best part was 3 goats kept walking up to the alter and men would run up to shoo them out.  Graduation of any sort is a huge deal in Haiti since most don't get beyond 5th grade.  The Matrone students organzied the whole cerimony themselves.  It was full of the students signing and they fed us lunch at the end before our long bumpy ride back home.

Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip Day 2

Haiti Day 2  Saturday January 24, 2015 Today I spent a relaxing morning at Heartline Ministries house in Port-au-Prince. Then they took me over to the Heartline Maternity Center where they have 3 midwives named Beth,  so I felt right at home. They do about 5-10 births a month at this center and lots of educational visits.   John then dropped me off at Servotel, a fancy hotel in Port-au-Prince to wait for the Midwives for Haiti driver Ronel to pick me up after getting the rest of this week's visitors from the airport. It is a great group especially since the MFH founders Nadene and Dr.  Steve are here too. We then all got to know each other on the very rough, bumpy, hilly and very nauseating 3 hour drive in the Yukon through the mountains to Hinche.  We were all talkative at first then we spent most of the ride working hard not to get sick despite the anti nausea meds we all took. After letting our stomachs recover,  we spent the evening sorting the abundance of supplies each of us brought along and we took a walk out back of the property to Prayer Hill to watch the sunset.  Unfortunately the Internet was down, so no way to connect home yet.

Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip - Day 1

Day 1  Friday January 23, 2015
My third trip with Midwives for Haiti begins!  Everything went well with my arrival.  I flew out of Moline so that is always so easy and nice. To get a flight for under $1,000 I flew down to Port-Au-Prince a day early.   I choose to stay at the Heartline Ministries Guest House Friday since I'm not getting picked up by MFH until noon tomorrow. The man in charge of the Heartline Ministries Guest House was waiting with a big sign for me just as I stepped out of the airport.  Their guest house is just 2 miles from the airport but it took us about 30 minutes to drive back due to the crazy Port-au-Prince traffic. 



The guest house is in a guarded and gated community so very safe.  The family that now runs the house are missionaries from Mississippi and they have 4 and 7 yr old girls and a 11 year old boy and a 18yr old Haitian boy they care for.  As soon as I arrived the 7yr old Kylee grabbed my hand and showed me how to climb the ladder to the roof of the house to watch the sunset with her mom.  It is 85 degrees here and it was a beautiful way to spend the evening.   We then ate dinner and visited with the 2  men from British Columbia who are electrical engineers here to help build/repair some radio towers and 4 men from New Jersey here working at an orphanage.   There is also a 22 yr old girl,  Chyanne living here for 6 months who is a teacher for a home school family.
 It is a very nice house and I have the girls room with 10 beds all to myself.  I was very tired so I headed to bed under my mosquito net around 8pm.  There was no running water last night but there was some today.  Plus they have WiFi so I got to Skype with the kids this morning.  I will be heading off to catch my ride to Hinche soon.  I hope the motion sickness meds work!

Midwives for Haiti Trip Day 8

Saturday October 6th 2012

Home Sweet Home

Wow! Where did this week go?  Time has flown by, yet it also feels like each day was a week long. 

Today we took the long, bumpy, winding, hilly journey from Hinche back to Port-Au-Prince through the beautiful, yet nauseating mountains.  It was a long, hot ride and I very nearly tossed my cookies quite a few times.  There are no "rules of the road" here other than usually the bigger vehicle wins...  Thankfully Ronell our driver is very good and we made the trip unscathed. 

Our initial flight was delayed by an hour which gave me less than an hour to go through customs, claim by bags, recheck them and run 2 terminals to my flight home.  I was SO happy that I just made my flight!  It was so sweet, even though it was late, Josh and the kids were there to greet me with hugs and kisses.  Home Sweet Home!

The flight from Haiti to the US is always interesting since 90% are mission volunteers.  So many great stories and good vibes on that flight.  It is impossible to fully understand the poverty there unless you have lived it.  I am SO blessed to have had this opportunity and can't wait to come back! 

Midwives for Haiti Trip Day 7

Friday October 5th 2012

I can't believe this week has already flown by!  But I am so excited to get home to see Josh and the kiddos tomorrow night if all my flights go well. 

Today we all took a beautiful walk out on the hills behind the wonderful MFH house to watch the sunrise before we headed back to the hospital to check in on our patients from the week for one last time. 

The best thing that has changed at the hospital is Dr. Alice that is here with me has brought donated linens and  arraigned to have a bunch of washable pads and linen for the women to use.  Even more amazingly, she is personally paying a lady to wash and stock the supply daily to ensure the women have a dry place to lay after delivery.  She is just awesome!


We then visited a small women's embroidery shop and I was able to buy a beautiful table runner.  They do amazing work and we are going to hire them to embroider the MFH logo onto things for volunteers to buy. 

Then we were in charge of teaching the students for the day in the classroom in our house and had fun working case studies from the week with them.  Their graduation from the program is just 1 month away and it is a huge deal for them. We have loved listening to them practice singing songs they will perform together at the ceremony.

Then we went back to the orphanage and purchased some beautiful art work that the boys had made to sell to support their families. 

We then had a great time revisiting the history of MFH from it's very start in 2004 by going to the original location of their school in a nearby town of Panteousu. 

Of course we ended the night out on our porch playing cards and chatting away.  I am so glad I have been bless with being able to spend time with these amazing people who if it weren't for them this whole organization wouldn't exist, and the women of Haiti would be even worse off. 


I am ready to be home with my family, but I can't wait to return here and see all the great things to come!  We will head out for the rough 3-4hr drive back to Port-Au-prince bright and early tomorrow morning.  Hoping it is a much less eventful trip home this time around!