First days in Kenya as a midwife, an experience that leaves its mark
Sara Venneri, my doula, and I arrived in Kenya, in Mombasa 3 days ago. We are staying at the home of Valentina Bonanno, the founder of Maharagwe fauzia onlus.
She trusts us and is leaving us a lot of freedom, right from the start. Here, unlike my daily work in the hospital, I have no schedules and shifts, and this gives me the opportunity to spend as much time as possible with women and therefore to learn a lot from them and understand what their needs are.
Being a midwife in Kenya
The work of the midwife in Kenya is a bit different from the ways we are used to in Italy.
Here patients are not assisted during labor, as is done in Italy, but are welcomed at the clinic and made to wait until the time of delivery.
Only at that moment the woman is made to enter the delivery room and assisted directly, which is why I feel very much the lack of that relationship of closeness with the future mother that is created during the wait and I would like with all my heart that they too savor that waiting, that respect in having patience and knowing how to watch over the well-being of the mother and the child constantly.
Communication is difficult because many of them do not speak English but we earned their trust and A beautiful collaboration made up of mutual teaching was born in a very short time.
Today we visited 18 women, most of them full-term and 4/5/6 child. During these hours the queue grew and we had the opportunity to take care of the women all together and then to do training in the field.
We had to reinvent ourselves, because here things unfortunately work, in the negative part, as in Italy: little information and knowledge, lying position in labor and gynecological position forced to deliver, episiotomy to speed up the expulsion of the baby, separation of the mother from the child immediately after birth to wash both and late breastfeeding.
It’s not easy but we’re putting a lot of effort into it and I wouldn’t change anything in the world the decision to be here now.
Kathryn Barlow is an OB/GYN doctor, which is the medical specialty that deals with the care of women's reproductive health, including pregnancy and childbirth.
Obstetricians provide care to women during pregnancy, labor, and delivery, while gynecologists focus on the health of the female reproductive system, including the ovaries, uterus, vagina, and breasts. OB/GYN doctors are trained to provide medical and surgical care for a wide range of conditions related to women's reproductive health.