On May 15, Elisabeth Bing died at the age of 100. It is no exaggeration to say that during her long life she perhaps did more than any other individual to humanize childbirth practices in the United States. Obituaries and tributes to her rightly celebrate her role as a founding mother of the Lamaze movement in America and a lifelong advocate for improvement in maternity care.
The post Elisabeth Bing and an American revolution in birth appeared first on OUPblog.
Yesterday, I told the story of Mahabouba, who suffered from fistulas after she had obstructed labor and her baby died inside of her. She found help at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia. I also said I would let you know a way that you could help girls like Mahabouba, and one of the best ways is to support the Fistula Foundation.
The Fistula Foundation was founded as American Friends Foundation for Childbirth Injuries in 2000 by Richard Haas and his daughter Shaleece. The Haases visited the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital and were impressed by all the work Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her late husband, Dr. Reginald Hamlin, were doing to help women with fistulas. When they returned to the United States, they started this non-profit organization to aid Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her hospital. The book Half the Sky and the Oprah Winfrey Show have both featured Dr. Hamlin and the Fistula Foundation.
Since its start, the Fistula Foundation has been able to fund many projects to help women suffering from fistulas in Ethiopia. For a full list of projects, see the foundation’s website.
So, how can you help? You can make a donation to the Fistula Foundation right on the website. You can also buy products such as a necklace, bracelet, or earrings or make a donation in someone else’s name. All of these proceeds go to the foundation. These are the perfect gifts for someone who already has everything.
To find out more about Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her hospital, read this book:
Today, I am sharing with you another story from the book Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Mahabouba did not die in childbirth or due to giving birth, but she did become incontinent. According to Kristof and WuDunn, more than 3 million women and girls are incontinent due to the lack of medical care during childbirth.
Here’s Mahabouba’s (an Ethopian girl) tragic story: When her parents divorced when she was a small child, she was given to her father’s sister, who didn’t give her an education and treated her as a servant. Mahabouba and her sister ran away to town and worked as maids for room and board. A neighbor told her that he could find better work for her when she was 13 years old, but he actually sold her for $10 to a 60-year-old man as a 2nd wife. The man raped and beat her. She got no sympathy from the first wife either, who also beat her out of jealousy. Mahabouba tried to run away, but she was always caught.
She soon became pregnant, and so the beatings didn’t happen as often and she had more freedom. When she was 7 months pregnant, she ran away. She fled to town, but the people said they would take her back to the man, so she ran to her village. She found her immediate family gone, and nobody wanted to help her because she was pregnant and someone else’s wife. She went to drown herself in the river, but her uncle found her and put her in a little hut by his house.
She had no midwife, and so she tried to have the baby by herself, but her pelvis hadn’t grown large enough to accommodate the baby’s head (since she was so young) and she ended up in obstructed labor. After seven days, she passed out and then someone summoned a birth attendant. When she woke up, she discovered her baby was dead and she had no control over her bladder or bowels. She couldn’t walk or stand. The people in the village thought she was cursed, and she should leave. But her uncle was torn. He gave her food and water, but moved her hut to the edge of the village and took the door off so there was no protection from the hyenas.
The first night, the hyenas came. Even though she couldn’t move her legs, Mahabouba warded them off with a stick at 14 years old. She knew to survive she had to get out of the village. She had heard of a Western missionary in a nearby village, and so she crawled for almost two days to the next village, up to the missionary doorstep. The missionary saved her and took her to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.
If you want to read what happens to Mahabouba at the fistula hospital or the wonderful work they do there, please buy the book: Half the Sky.
Tomorrow, I will tell you a way you can help girls like Mahabouba.
