Supporting Safe Birth

May 7, 2022 Right to left: Dave, Jessica, and Nancy arrive and are welcomed to Guatemala by Silvia and a random guy that was invited to join in on the photo fun.

May 8, 2022 Mariana and Dave (members of the volunteer team) uncreating, sorting, packaging the equipment and supplies to be distributed to the Master Trainers. This process took several days to complete.

May 9, 2022 AM

Off to Juzgado de Paz y Centro de Atención Permanente Fraijanes, Fraijanes, Guatemala. Helping Mothers Survive Severe Bleeding After Birth – a lecture for doctors and nurses with demonstrations and simulations.

The doctors, nurses, volunteer teaching team, and interpreters, May 9, 2022

Left: Dr. Wilson Aroldo Zacarias Matzar – timing is everything. Right: Explaining timing of medication administration in English and then Spanish.

May 9, 2022 PM

We went back to the Juzgado de Paz y Centro de Atención Permanente Fraijanes, Fraijanes, Guatemala. Helping Mothers Survive Severe Bleeding After Birth – for first responders. A lecture and hands on practice for when, why, and how to use a Non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG).

May 10, 2022 PM

We went back to the Juzgado de Paz y Centro de Atención Permanente Fraijanes, Fraijanes, Guatemala. Helping Mothers Survive Severe Bleeding After Birth for comadronas.

May 11, 2022

Our next stop was the Municipal Palace, San Jose Pinula, Guatemala.

Thirty-four comadronas attended a lecture and simulations Helping Mothers Survive – Essential Care for Labor & Birth

Lois Marie Foundation donated delivery aprons, masks, & baby hats that were distributed to each midwife in a Rotary branded string back pack.

We’ve been enjoying our first few days in Guatemala! We’ve been working on organizing our equipment here and the project mannequins and equipment for our master trainers. Here’s some photos along with a photo of the thermometer device taking hand temperatures prior to entering a restaurant. Thanks to Sylvia and Jeannette for all your help!

Special thanks to the Lois Marie Foundation for a grant providing water-resistant aprons and masks for a group of Guatemalan midwives. More photos to follow in Guatemala! Thanks & congrats also to new nurse midwife Bridget!

We had two great training days for Helping Mothers Survive: Bleeding After Birth-Day 1 and Essential Care for Labor & Birth on September 18-19, 2021, in Madison, Wisconsin, in anticipation of a training trip to Guatemala planned for October 20-30, 2021.

Please contact us if you are interested in joining us. Many thanks for your support!

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We are excited to be planning our upcoming trip to Guatemala, supported by a Rotary International Vocational Training Team Global Grant!

We are scheduled to train 87 midwives and nurses in 4 programs: Helping Mothers Survive-Bleeding after Birth, Preeclampsia-Eclampsia, Essential Care for Labor and Birth and Helping Babies Survive-Helping Babies Breathe. Along with the training days, we will be providing mannequins and teaching supplies to 11 Master Trainers we have already trained so they can continue to train others in rural areas of Guatemala.

We have trained 3 new trainers on our team. Stay tuned for their stories of new adventures in Guatemala!

Hello

We are in the process of planning a 2-week training trip to Guatemala, Oct 6-20, 2019, dates to be confirmed. We will be training and mentoring midwifery students and midwives in Helping Mothers Survive and Helping Babies Breathe programs.

Interested individuals need to attend our September 21-22, 2019 training weekend at UnityPoint Health-Meriter Hospital, 202 S. Park St., Madison, WI.

Sign up for this training under on this website under Programs. Please email Nancy at safebirthguatemala@gmail.com if you have questions, thanks

We had a great training day on April 6! HMS Preeclampsia & Essential Care for Labor & Birth:

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Supporting Safe Birth is now a recognized charitable organization at AmazonSmile. When you use amazonsmile.com to shop at Amazon, .5% of your purchases are donated to your designated charity. Please consider adding Supporting Safe Birth as your AmazonSmile charity.  Remember, only purchases at smile.amazon.com (not the mobile app or http://www.amazon.com) support our work in Guatemala.

Thanks for making a difference! We’re helping save lives of mothers and babies in Guatemala.

Upon my return, one of my best friends said something wise and insightful to me.  She said it seemed like this trip was like running a marathon. We are excited in the lead-up, we struggle and feel pain during, and we describe it as the most amazing, transformative thing we’ve ever done in the aftermath.

We were up before dawn, before the roosters, in order to catch a flight home leaving just after sunrise. Shortly before sunrise, at 0415, the airline finally gave us the option of rerouting through Dallas rather than trying to plow through the Category 3 hurricane currently making landfall in northern Florida. While I’m beyond excited to be going home to my little family today, I know I’ll miss living the lessons that this trip has taught me.

Over the course of the last 10 days, I have realized that the girl who used to blithely gallivant around the world no longer exists. She has been replaced by a woman with roots.  Sometimes we perceive roots as holding us down, but they also give us stability. Stability to stretch even further beyond our comfort zone than we thought possible. Guatemala, a place I admit I knew next to nothing about prior to this undertaking, got under my skin and into my blood.  Looking forward to finding a way to go back.

 

Today was our second (and final) day of teaching at the midwifery school here in Guatemala City. It was also our last full day in Guatemala. On the last day or so we became aware of a strong hurricane working its way from Central America towards Florida. It was formed out of the storm we experienced down in Chiquimulilla, and the flooding it caused was so bad by today that they were evacuating the area where we had just been staying. It was set to make landfall north of Miami where we were due to fly into on Wednesday morning. We were pretty sure we could get into Miami, but we were also pretty sure we wouldn’t get out of Miami in a timely manner. The airlines, in their infinite wisdom, told us they were not planning on rerouting passengers until the day of our flight.

But today, we were teaching Helping Babies Breathe. The class started out on a somber note when some of the student midwives wanted to share their experiences with babies who were stillborn or who died shortly after birth. They talked about how those experiences motivated them to become midwives and why they felt like the training we provide, in particular, is so important to them. The class followed the usual rhythm….the students take pretests that assess their knowledge and confidence, we teach hands-on skills using the mannequins and role-playing, skills tests throughout the day to assess understanding of the material being taught, and ending with knowledge and confidence post-tests. All the students in my group were smart and learned quickly. The other trainers said the same thing about the students in their groups. Over lunch, we conducted a focus group and asked the student midwives the same questions we asked the midwives down in Chiquimulilla. They shared their hopes and dreams for their futures and for the future of the health of their communities. Like the midwives in Chiquimulilla, the students also talked about how the midwives in their communities need access to basic equipment so they can better care for their patients. They expressed a need for everything from gloves and gauze to blood pressure cuffs and cord clamps.

As in Xela, the session ended with a little ceremony to pass out certificates to the students, lots of laughter and photos and some happy tears. We definitely hope we will be invited back to teach at the school next year. After leaving the school, before dinner, we decided to take a quick run through the Mercado Central for some last-minute purchases. Nancy and I entered the market on one of the levels below the artisan level. It was a wild array of baptismal gowns, rhinestone jewelry, housewares, and produce.  Sadly, we had very limited time and we weren’t able to poke around at all. We ended up having dinner much later than we had intended, compliments of the Guatemala City traffic and finally made it back to our hotel around 10pm. It was the moment of truth…..would all my treasures fit in my suitcase without exceeding the 50lb weight limit??  Yes and no…..yes they all fit, but my bag weighed 50.4lbs…. Luckily for me, the airline person didn’t get her tail in a knot about 4 ounces. Tune in tomorrow for my final blog post to see if we got to fly through or around Hurricane Michael!