"Please fast come..."

Last Thursday morning our friend Richard who does some work for us, turned up at our gate – his wide smile and twinkling eyes a sure indication that his pregnant wife was finally in labour. After unsuccessfully taking her on the back of a boda (motorbike taxi) from roadside clinic to hospital, trying to find somewhere for her to deliver the baby that didn’t cost, but also didn’t have a bad reputation, he eventually took her back to the midwifes clinic that had provided her with ante natal care and charged around $45 for the delivery. He came to us with no way to pay, nor all the necessary supplies required by the midwife let alone supplies for the baby. Due to a tragic experience around a month earlier, this hardworking man had been left without any money to put towards the birth. 

I told him we’d take care of the cost of the delivery, knowing that when Pete got home he would’ve done the same thing. We didn’t anticipate that when I left with him to get supplies and assist his wife at the clinic, that I’d still be with them for the best part of the next 3 days throughout a labour no mum would wish to remember. 

Pete and I had just been dissecting Isaiah 58 the day before, and going over some verses that God had spoken to us several years ago that really are our life verses. We'd been talking about how some of the verses you really can't take any way but literally, no matter how much one wants to try to put a different angle on it to make it more palitable or easier. We decided that often we just have to do things that unsettle our way of life and it costs. Little did we know what opportunity God would present the next morning! 

I arrived at the clinic which was also the midwifes house, to find Phiona in early stages of labour. The midwife wasn’t going to be there til four pm so her daughter advised us to go back home and come back after four. We returned that night after trying to carefully navigate my way around the terribly pot-holed dirt roads with contractions around 3 minutes apart. You'd think these roads alone would be enough to move a labour along! We were met by the grey-haired midwife who began nursing in the early 60’s and was now struggling to walk as well as stay awake. She went over the rules of having a baby at her clinic. 1) No using the pit latrine, nor going outside the room in case you had the baby outside and threw it into the latrine. Yip, that was the rule. At one stage the midwife threatened to lock my friend in the room so she’d comply. We were having a great time. I left about 10:30 that night and said to call if they needed me. Throughout this whole process my aim was to be a support to them without wanting to disempower them by making all their decisions, though I didn’t have a good feeling about how things were progressing and as time went on it became apparent that they were looking to me not only as a support, but as a nurse, mother and someone these scared first time parents trusted that they believed would make sure everything was ok. No pressure or anything! Over the course of the next 30ish hours the midwife popped in a few times – she’d lie on the bed (yes, I’m talking about the midwife – not the labouring mum), talk about her own labour that lasted seven days, then laugh at the pain my friend was in. Can you tell we were becoming good friends?! It dawned on me that this was the same midwife that had told her she would have her baby 5 weeks before her due date (even gave her an exact day) as apparently all first time mums have their babies early. It was also the same one that had failed to give her any indication of what labour or childbirth would be like, and the mum sat with her jaw dropped open at my kitchen table in early January as I explained signs of labour and she realised she wouldn’t just go to the clinic on January 29 and have the baby magically arrive. Seven weeks later, here we sat.

many hours spent walking up and down here outside the room

The latrine, middle door

The latrine. Sadly, it's not too uncommon to hear of babies found in varying forms of these. On one of my visits I checked how easy it would be to get a baby out, & decided it would be near impossible.

Early Friday morning I got a phone call to come back to the clinic. Pete filled the thermos with warm milk for me to take up with some bread for their breakfast as no food or water is provided at clinics and nearly all hospitals here. I turn up and hear how the labours continued steadily overnight with no sleep to be had by either of the new parents, though the midwife informed me she’d had a great sleep and had slept all night. The new dad-to-be asks me to stay with his wife while he goes home and checks their house. He was also keen to have a little sleep as he’d been up for the past two nights. We spent many hours before he returned, walking up and down the narrow path beside the clinic to see if things would heat up a bit. I dispelled a few myths about white people never breastfeeding, not knowing how to grow food or work the land, and never sleeping in the same room as their babies. We also talked about the Ugandan culture surrounding childbirth and the husbands role (or lack of role) in it! It’s still very much a womens thing, where the men have very little involvement if any, other than making the baby in the first place. So it was no surprise when her husband returned ten hours later in his Sunday best to welcome the child he thought must have surely come by now!

Things were looking like we’d be seeing a baby soon so thinking my fears were maybe misplaced we agreed that I’d go home and they’d call if they needed me. 4:15 Saturday morning my phone rang. “It’s bad, we have to go to Malago (main public hospital) now, please come”. Pete and I both get dressed and quickly drive off. On the way to the clinic we briefly discuss the possibility of taking her to the international hospital that is 15 minutes closer and doesn’t have the same frequent horror stories of mothers and babies dying in childbirth. When we arrived I could almost physically feel the mums pain - fully dilated for hours, writhing in agony, no pain relief to offer even slight comfort. We get her into the car and the midwife offers for me to borrow her forceps to take to Mulago in case she’ll need a forceps delivery. The picture of me having to do a forceps delivery in a ward full of labouring women with one or two midwives seeing to them all, coupled with the all too frequent stories of childbirth deaths made the decision to take her to the international hospital an obvious one. We’d do whatever it took to make sure both mum and baby made it through alive. Pete and I briefly discuss the approximate cost of a natural delivery, and decide we’d manage if we just pull from wherever we could and pray it’s not a caesarean as we didn’t have that kind of money.

We get to the international hospital, rush her into the emergency dept and are met with the worlds slowest nurses who argue that she can’t really have been in labour for two days and I have to push and keep pushing to get her up to the labour ward and seen by a doctor. An hour later we get there and the doctor and midwife decide to wait for two hours to see if she’ll be able to deliver naturally before intervening. Pete and I go home just before the sun begins to rise and little girls wonder where their mummy and daddy are (we did wake the older kids to let them know!). A few hours later I get a call “please fast come”. That’s it, nothing else. Not knowing what might be happening, I rush to get there and am met by a distraught husband saying “the baby’s not happy. You go in”. I walk into the delivery room not realising my presence there has now released the husband to go home. He really was doing a fantastic job and had been quite counter cultural the last few days. After telling me the baby was in distress and the mother not doing well, the midwife also took my presence to be her cue to step out of the room for a while, leaving me with a fully dilated mum, onto her I don’t know what hour of pushing to no avail and crying “aunty, please make the pain stop”. Memories of the wonderful midwife that had delivered five of my six babies flooded back, and I found myself imitating the way she had coached me through. Meanwhile, the midwife returned to say the gynaecologist would see her in half an hour. By the time the half hour was up she was already prepped for theatre as it was obvious this baby wasn’t going to come out on it’s own and the midwife and I were wheeling her down to theatre. 

I hadn’t realised Richard had gone home, so was surprised when I rung to see where he was that he asked for them to delay surgery for an hour for him to walk back to the hospital! He begged me not to let them operate on her. Later I was to learn of the past experiences his family had with surgery resulting in the deaths of both a mum and baby.  I had to be blunt, and explained that it was an emergency and delaying wasn’t an option – his baby might die. He hung up on me. I went back to the ward to wait. I’m feeling the pressure about now as even though it wasn’t my decision to do a C-section, I’d supported it and even though this was our only shot of a safe arrival, if it went badly I was the one that had brought them to this hospital and the one they’d trusted. I remembered the prayer we’d prayed with Richard in the early hours of the morning, praying that God would guide the medical staff and give them wisdom to make the right decisions that would result in a safe delivery. I quickly prayed again.  An hour and a half later Richard and his brother found me waiting there and said we needed to hurry to theatre, I needed to talk to them because they were delaying and he doesn’t want his baby to die. They were waiting for the next available anethetist and meantime asked for one of us to scrub in to keep the mother calm. This was WAAAAAAY beyond what Richard could get his head around despite me saying he’d get to see his baby enter the world he just wasn’t into it. He said I must go and look after his wife and he’d wait. I have to be totally honest here, the nurse in me was a little excited at the opportunity even though I wished she didn’t need the operation. Needless to say, I got into some scrubs and entered the theatre. I don’t know how long I held my breath for when the lifeless looking baby arrived, waiting for her to cry or give some other sign of life. At some stage it happened, and I knew then that everything would be ok. The surgeon quietly said another hour and the baby wouldn’t have survived. 

Waiting to go in to theatre, couldn't resist taking a self portrait with my phone!

A month earlier Pete and I had been told that they wanted us to name their baby. We would give her an English name and they’d give her an African name. We didn’t know then how attached to this baby we’d be by the time she was born, or what she and her mum would have to go through to get her here. A few hours after her arrival they reminded us we needed to name her. She got her name yesterday.  Without discussing it, we both knew her name was to be Blessing. We came up with a couple of other options in case her parents didn’t like that name and presented them all to them. In unison, they said “it’s Blessing. Baby Blessing”.  It was fun to see the brief look of shock on their faces though when before we gave the real names, Pete said we wanted her to be called Peter! Thankfully they knew us well enough to know he was joking!

Baby Blessing at 4 hours old

We really don’t know what each day is going to bring. We thought cutting back a bit on our food for the month would enable us to pay for the necessary supplies and the slightly dodgy clinic birth, but little did we know that God had a greater challenge in front of us. Were we really willing to spend ourselves (literally) on behalf of the needy? When faced with the hospital bill of several million shillings yesterday we felt it. And I think sometimes we’re meant to.  Spending ourselves isn’t about giving away something that we don’t need, it’s not paying for an operation out of our excess, nor giving away some of our surplus clothes. It is to be of help in whatever way needed, and sometimes that’s going to cost. And that’s ok. 

Isaiah 58

6“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

7Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe him,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

8Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear;

then your righteousness^a will go before you,

and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

9Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,

with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

10and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

then your light will rise in the darkness,

and your night will become like the noonday.

11The Lord will guide you always;

he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land

and will strengthen your frame.

You will be like a well-watered garden,

like a spring whose waters never fail.

12Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins

and will raise up the age-old foundations;

you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,

Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.