Celebrating midwives, motherhood

By Njoki Karuoya

For every woman, a midwife is a very important person. She is the one person who can make the childbearing experience extremely memorable or extremely traumatic. Sadly, the stories that keep hitting the media is of women being mistreated by midwives — how they berate the pregnant women in labour for being so difficult in pushing out the infant while they had fun making it. These are really cruel sentiments that hurt to the core when you are scared, frantic and in excruciating pain.

 Incidentally, these stories are, in my opinion, in the minority league. Majority of midwives are great, overworked women who help millions of women in this country to give birth to their bundles of joy. The stories of these exemplary women who toil every single day to simultaneously save two lives — that of mother and child — over and over again, go unheard.

I suppose it is the reason why the United Nations gave birth to (no pun intended) the International Day of the Midwife, which was celebrated globally early this week on Sunday (May 5). In Kenya, our midwives, who total about 500 for a population of about 20 million women (shocking, isn’t it?), marked this day with various activities.

 In Nairobi, for instance, the midwives met at Nyayo House and walked to Pumwani Maternity Hospital, the specialised hospital that is the epitome of midwifery in Kenya, where they then bonded with the women and professionals there. Every woman who has found the joy of motherhood will agree with me that this is one of the most sacred roles for women. It is also the reason why those who cannot naturally give birth, for whatever reason, seek to also enjoy this inborn purpose via adoption, fostering, guardianship or playing auntie to nieces and nephews.

 Motherhood is all about giving and sacrifice, which is perhaps why mothers are like the other arm of God — He takes care of all of us, but He depends on woman to do the nitty gritty for Him by watching over His children. Because of this gift of motherhood, women get insights into just how loving, giving and forgiving God is; and learn how to survive despite experiencing the worst pain and injustices ever meted out on humanity.

Now imagine being a midwife. If even ten per cent (a tenth) of Kenya’s women — that is, two million women — were to deliver each year, it would mean that one midwife services approximately 4,000 pregnant women a year, which works out to about 11 women a day, without a weekend break in between. Add the amount of time it takes to nurse a pregnant woman in labour and the bloody mess  the whole delivering process is, up to the time the little angels are born, and you begin to get the picture of the physical, emotional and psychological toll that midwives undergo, then she has to go home and continue serving her husband and children.

I have interacted with midwives and I know that not a single one goes to her workplace with the intention of harming or killing a mother and child. But many times, circumstances conspire against them to produce deaths of about 8,000 women every year. The midwives have complained, time and again, of the inadequate equipment in their health facilities and demanded for better equipment. They have also requested for more training and staff to be recruited. But too often, their demands are ignored by powers that consider child-bearing a natural phenomenon that does not require much intervention, and when deaths of mothers and their babies occur, they are deemed to be ‘God’s Will’. How horrible.

 Five years ago, about 1,300 people were reported killed from the 2007-8 post-election violence. Two very powerful commissions were set up; one headed by Johann Kriegler and the other by Justice Philip Waki. Millions were spent on these two commissions and efforts were made to ensure no Kenyan would sacrifice his or her life for politicians again. Not a single commission, at least to my knowledge, has ever been set up to investigate why thousands of Kenya’s women continue to die while giving birth to this nation. No major steps or multi-million campaigns, like the just concluded mega peace campaigns prior to, during and after this year’s General Election, have been made to stem this tide of needless deaths of our women whose only ‘crime’ is to want to give life. Are the deaths of these women trivial? Isn’t that a sad fact?