Doula For The Day
I walked into the delivery room and took in my surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. A tiny space the size of a small examining room, a little supply cabinet, incubator, a few buckets, and a flat bed with what looked like a black garbage bag being used as a sheet by the naked woman that lay there. I had been told a bit about deliveries at Zimba Mission Hospital, but nothing can prepare you for what you see when you are there. I introduced myself and Brianna, and was glad to hear that she spoke very good English (most people there speak Tonga).
She was 4cm dilated, contracting, bleeding, and already in a good amount of pain, but was able to carry on conversation. Her name was Edna. She was twenty-five, a married housewife, and mother to a five year old little girl named Karen. Because of the flat bed, her bloody show pooled around her entire body, up to her neck and back. I did my best to keep her clean, wiping her down periodically, but each contraction brought with it more blood and with only a small roll of toilet paper to work with, we were fighting a losing battle. The nurse midwife only came in to check on her once every few hours. If Brianna and I had not been there, she would have been lying there alone. We became her personal doulas doing everything we could to ease her pain and discomfort.
By noon her pain was severe, she squeezed my hand and pulled me close to her with each contraction. I felt myself bonding with this woman, this twenty-five year old girl, from Zambia, with husband and child, and nothing in common with me at all, except that I was with her on this day, holding her hand and whispering encouragement in her ear. Brianna and I took turns massaging her back and fanning off the flies gathering around her in the heat. She had progressed only a few centimeters more and the doctor was considering a C-section if she did not deliver by afternoon. I held her hand as she cried out in pain moaning “Mayo, mayo!” meaning “mother”. My heart broke for her as she told me she was dying and had no power left in her at all, asking God what wrong she had done to deserve to die. I asked if I could pray for her and she gladly accepted. I sat there gently rubbing her belly, looking up at the small lizard and huge spider on the ceiling above me; I looked over my shoulder at cows grazing right outside her window in the stifling hot delivery room; and then I looked down at Edna as she reached out to me and said “I will never forget you my sister”.
Those words meant more to me than anything else in the world at that moment. Those words confirmed to me the desire that God has placed in my heart to care for pregnant women. This woman needed me here. I looked at her and thought of all the other Zambian women just like her. Women like Edna, with witch doctor marking over her inner thighs and around her abdomen and back, women laying in a village hut having a baby on a dirty mat, women desperate for antenatal and postnasal care. Women in need. Those are the women I want to fight for. Those are the women who need to be fought for.
The doctor came in at three o’clock and examined her again, 8cm getting close. But as time passed, no one came back to check again. The nurse midwife, also in charge of the pediatric ward had an emergency and could not leave. Edna was suffering and asked me to pray for her again. I grew fearful at the thought of something happening to her or the baby, and that I might not be able to see the birth. I prayed for an easy delivery, for a healthy baby, and in my heart I prayed desperately that I would be able to see this woman who I had grown so close to over the past eight hours, deliver her child. But God’s timing is not my own and at five o’clock Edna was 9cm dilated, her contractions were nearly fifteen minutes apart and we had to leave.
My throat tightened at the realization that I would never see her or her unborn baby again. She looked up at me and told me that we had helped her so much and that she wouldn’t have been able to come this far without us. She grasped my hands and pulled them to her lips, kissing them and crying. I pray that she delivered a healthy baby. I had a feeling that it would be a boy. I hope she knows how much she meant to me and that she will always be my sister.
xox
Haley
