just another glorious day in India

This is my life now, and I'm totally okay with it.  

HAPPPYY THANKSGIVING!

Today I did not sit around the table and enjoy a nice meal with my family. I did not watch a Macy's Day Parade or play kickball with the cousins. I did not have turkey and I definitely didn't have any pumpkin pie. And while I miss my family immensely (its just never nice to be missing a holiday) I know I still have plenty to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day celebration. In fact, I am overwhelmed with gratitude.  I started my day out with a 15 minute bumpy rickshaw ride to the hospital. And I put on my uniform and slide on my gloves and then I got to be a midwife. I got to to sit with women and rub there aching backs and look into their frightened eyes and I got to show them a Jesus who loves them. Then I got to welcome life into the world.

I am thankful today that there were no complications.
I am thankful today that I didn't witness any stillbirths or abortions.
I am thankful today that all of our babies were healthy.
I am thankful today that I got to work alongside some pretty amazing women on my team.
I am thankful today for the many opportunities I have at the hospital.
I am thankful today for the mother who I got to labor with who spoke English! Ah, it was amazing.
I am thankful today that I got to talk to my mom and my sister on the phone.
I am thankful for the gift of pregnancy and life and the opportunity to work with women.
I am thankful today for the Muslim women I got to labor with- who are usually completely reserved and covered up but they allow me to be close to them. And they trust me. I am thankful for that.

I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  While it may be a very different Thanksgiving than I have ever experienced before- I have to say I can't imagine being or doing anything else toady. I would really like some pumpkin pie and I would really like to be with my family but I am thankful that I got to celebrate Thanksgiving this way on this day.

Welcome, baby Issac

PS....I am  ALSO thankful for the American missionary family my team met a few weeks ago who invited us over to their house to celebrate with them on Saturday.  Yes! Dreams of turkey and cannied yams may just come true after all!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to those in America. May you have a day filled with love and gratitude.
And to my family: I hope you know I miss you all a lot. I am so thankful for the crazy, beautiful family that I have.

"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history"

I need You more
More than yesterday
I need You Lord
More than words can say
I need You more
Than ever before
I need You Lord 

More than the air I breathe
More than the song I sing
More than the next heartbeat
More than anything
And Lord as time goes by
I'll be by Your side
Cause I never want to go back
To my old life

Right here in Your presence
Is where I belong
This old broken heart
Has finally found a home
And I'll never be alone

well..I''d cry after a long trip like that too.

a sweet baby girl I had the pleasure of delivering!

fresh produce! Right around the corner from our home.

don't worry! It's just a little vernix (a grease that covers the skin sometimes as birth. Totally normal :) )

doing some more home visits

we had to travel quite a ways to the "countryside" to get to this house. It was a nice change from the normal hustle and bustle of the city.

sweet!

"Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls."

Sometimes the hospital isn't an easy place to be. I am grateful for the many opportunities I have to learn and to work with women and babies and even doctors and nurses, but most of the time this job proves to be a constant roller coaster of emotions.  I love every second of it. But in the midst of celebrating life you have to battle death and there's nothing that can suck the joy out of a person quicker than seeing dead babies on a constant basis. I am learning though that joy cannot be based on your environment or on your circumstances. Joy is a choice. And choosing joy cannot be a temporary choice. The second part of Nehemiah 8:10 says, "Don't be sad, because the joy of the Lord will make you strong." (NCV)  Joy. It's the very nature of who God is. I wonder though, how to find joy in certain circumstances.

A couple weeks ago I finished my shift in the labor room but for some reason I wandered back in (hard to leave a place you really love, I guess.) When I came in I noticed my friend, Maj laboring with a woman. The baby was crowning and the mother was connected to an IV-looking exhausted, sickly, and unable to bear down enough to deliver. She was extremely thin. Maybe 90 pounds and she was full term. I was drawn to the situation because Maj is actually a midwife student back in her hometown in Denmark. I saw that she was doing a delivery and I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn from her.  I guess I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Maj looked at me slightly concerned, "Are you going to be okay with this?" 

I quickly realized this woman, Padma, who was malnourished, with a severe case of jaundice, and a liver disease would have to fight through her violent pain to deliver a dead baby. 

How do you encourage a weak, sick woman to go through some of the most excruciating pain of her life just to push out a baby who has already died? What do you do in this situation? The student part of me was eager to learn exactly what to do. But the human part of me knew that what this woman needed was to be loved. I came close to her face and looked into her eyes. Death tried to creep in and look back at me. I wish she could have understood english in that moment. While it would have been hard enough to find words in my native language to share with her, it was even more disheartening knowing she had no idea what I was saying to her. Her eyes kept closing and rolling back. I prayed for her. I knew the situation could be more dangerous than just the loss of her baby. What would the trauma of delivering a baby do to her fragile body? After some time of some inconsistent and feeble pushes the lifeless baby boy came out of his mother and severely dangerous amounts of blood immediately followed. Blood splashed onto my legs and drenched my shoes. Maj had to insert the better part of her arm into Padma in order to compress the uterus and control the bleeding. She was postpartum hemorrhaging, which is a severe complication that can follow births. The bleeding wouldn't stop. I wandered how someone so little could produce such an immense amount of blood.

"Will this be the first death of a mother I see?" I thought. 

It can't be. Our prayers became more frevernt. 

I must say, for the very first time I was grateful for the response that came from the doctors and other health care workers at our hospital. They actually got involved. Specialist came in and tried to assist in stopping the hemorrhaging. The woman kept losing consciousnesses and her oxygen intake became severely low.  This situation was overwhelming, but in the moment you just don't have much time to think about it. The family was allowed into the room. I think because the doctors knew she could very well be taking her last breaths at any moment. Padma was hooked up to blood that her family had to provide themselves and bring in. It began to pump into her veins. After around 2 hours of fighting for her life, Padma became more stable. Eventually the bleeding was controlled and began to subside. Maybe it was a miracle? Maybe her life was saved by our prayers, or maybe by the knowledge and understanding of how to treat Postpartum Hemorrhaging that came from the doctors. Maybe a combination of the both? 

This is not really the question that I thought about though. I am grateful that Padma survived. However, I wonder, how could this have been prevented? Why was she so thin and so sick and why hadn't she received any help before her delivery? This whole situation was so unnecessary. I believe that her baby could have lived. I believe she had the right to be cared for. And fed. I believe that someone could have done something. But nothing was done. And I'm not sure who, if anyone, is to blame for that? This woman lost her baby and almost lost her life. I know that God did not intend this incredible gift of life to cause death. And I am here, and I am helping but these types of situations can often arise and try to steal my joy. That is why I know I cannot put my hope in my circumstances. I cannot look for joy in things of the world because I will constantly be robbed of them. But the everlasting joy of the Lord must be my strength. I hope and pray that I can be apart of preventing these types of things from happening. Padma did not lose her life on this day, but many woman in the same situation have. I hope to be apart of seeing preventable maternal deaths become demolished...because we have the ability and capacity to stop them.  

Padma, before she delivered.

just some random photos

just another normal waiting day at the hospital

some more cleaning, labor room walls. The one we scrubbed clean on the left. Right side is what it looked like before.

women laboring on the floor, waiting for a bed to open up

home sweet home...sort of

Part of our job throughout the week is to do “home visits.”  Home visits consist of us trying to contact mothers that we have delivered and somehow, some way communicate with them enough to let them know we want to come visit them at their house. It’s a great way to show the women and their families that we care about them, that they are important enough to see after they have delivered. It also gives us the opportunity to do a check up on them and their baby and give them the time, love, and attention that we all feel they deserve. It always has the potential to be a bit awkward, seeing that neither of us can speak each others language and I am never really sure if they want us there or if they just feel obligated to allow the weird white “doctors” into their homes.

Well last week my team of 4 had the opportunity to visit two different families. We hoped in a rickshaw that made a lot of wrong turns but 45 bumpy minutes later we found a man in a shiny metallic purple shirt waving down our transport so that we could follow his motorcycle down some windy dirt roads into a Hindu neighborhood. I would later come to find out that it was Jothi’s husband. It’s often the husbands who come to find us and bring us back to their home. I like to see the dads, to know that they are involved. I often imagine our moms (meaning the ones we deliver) shooing their husbands away to go and find us. I wonder what that conversation looks like.

Mom: “Husband-go get my white doctor friends.”

Husband: “you have white doctor friends?!?!”

And then she looks at him sardonically and wonders why she has to waste so much time answering his silly questions.

Mom: “of course I have white doctor friends, now they are lost go find them and bring them back to me at once!”

Maybe my imagination gets a bit ahead of me at times? Have you noticed?

(Let me pause for a moment and explain that most of the women here think we are doctors. It’s a bit hard to explain that we are in fact midwives, and we are just students. We definitely do try to clarify it, but with the language barriers it tends to be easier to just go with it.)

When we arrived at Jothi’s (pronounced Jody) house we were warmly welcomed into a room where a “well fed” (like my mom likes to call it) bald man was sleeping on a couch. He woke up to four us just starring at him.  I think he was the uncle or brother-I’m not sure. I am sure though, that never in a million years would he have imagined waking up to four western women sitting next to him when he arises from his normal afternoon slumber. Remember- potential to be awkward at times. We just said hello. Not much more to say in that situation. Jothi eventually came into the room. Is it okay for me to be in love with my moms? She lit up the room. I first connected with her in the hospital a few weeks ago when I approached her bed while she was laboring and asked her how old she was.

“twenty tree. Twenty faw. I done know?” and then she just laughed and begged me not to leave her side while she was contracting. She was full of joy, even in the midst of her pain. She was the same age as me (we both think) and she spoke a little English. How can you not fall in love with that?

It was no different seeing her today. We stumbled over our language barrier but we quickly connected and had a great time. We met the rest of her family, looked at pictures from her wedding, had water and warm milk that I had to pass to someone else when she wasn’t looking. She took out her bangles and put them on all our wrists and then after about an hour we ushered into a different room to enjoy a big meal that her husband went out to get us. The whole afternoon was so much fun. I want to be friends with Jothi. I wish we could hangout and actually talk. I look at her and think we are from such a different world. Not only our cultures but the fact that we are the same age and she is this loving, kind, mother of 2 and housewife and I am… definitely not. We eventually had to part ways because our second home visist was eagerly awaiting our arrival. I hope to see her again.

Jothi

Don't you just have to love her?

Her oldest daughter

baby!

her mother preparing plates for our lunch

eating some rice with our hands

with the hubby!

the whole fam- uncle put a shirt on for the photo!

One family down, one to go. This next visit was interesting. I arrived as a “doctor” and left as an Indian Princess. Is it bad that I don’t mind either of those titles? 
She was so overwhelmed with joy that we would come to her home and spend time with her. Like in any Indian home, snacks and drinks were immediately brought to us. We stuffed  down the food as our stomachs were already filled to the max from Jothi’s meal just an hour beforehand. You can never refuse food and even if you do take food- seconds and often time thirds are always expected from you. Its not the ideal diet plan, but it is an honor to be so well taken care of.  We talked and shared stories and heard about her husband and it didn't take long until the family started playing dress up with us. Just like a little doll, this is how I transformed from a doctor into a princess.

I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking….

You can see- Ingjerd, my teammate is being adorned with a veil and jewelery.

her baby

not my dress, not my jewelery. The loved making me wear it though!

but I will still be glad

¹⁷ "Fig trees may not grow figs,
       and there may be no grapes on the vines.
    There may be no olives growing
       and no food growing in the fields.
    There may be no sheep in the pens
       and no cattle in the barns.
 ¹⁸ But I will still be glad in the Lord;
       I will rejoice in God my Savior.
 ¹⁹ The Lord God is my strength.
       He makes me like a deer that does not stumble
       so I can walk on the steep mountains"

Habakuk 3:17-19

icecream anyone?

My team of 4 sat together this week to meet and go over some health care teaching we would be doing for a small group of ladies later on in the day. A small neighborhood of women are interested in learning about health care so the four of us discussed how we explain the basic principles of taking vitals to people who have very little education and lack the ability to communicate in English. It wasn’t the easiest task, but one we were excited to be apart of. Raising up health care workers out of ordinary people. That’s what we are after all. And empowering the locals to work after we are gone is what it will take to see true transformation happen in this city. After going through our lesson we decided to take on an equally challenging task for the day: evangelism.  We decided (partially because it was asked of us by our leadership to include it in our schedule this week) to take an hour and head out into the streets to see who we could talk to. As we left the building we live on and walked down the stairs of the big Cathedral in front of our home we saw the smiling face of Neveena. Neveena’s friendly smile and familiar “hellooooo!!!” to the other girls in my group led us all over to meet her. Apparently a few of the other girls from my class had met her sometime last week and she was so excited to meet foreigners that an instant connection was made. It was no different on this day. She smiled from ear to ear and eagerly waved us over to meet her two little boys and her husband.

            “this.. birthday boy… “ she says as she points to a little bugged eye child starring up at us with amusement.  She continues, “this my husband. He laugh at my English. It is no so good,” she points over to her husband who’s wearing the worker uniform of an attendant at the elementary school.  “You. Be my friend. Come to my home. Anytime,” she continues, enthusiastically.

            Me and the other three girls all gave each other the “go ahead” glance knowing we had the same thing in mind. One spoke up, “We have some time right now we could come over to your house but only for one hour” (making sure to emphasize our time constraint otherwise the great hospitality of an Indian would require we stay for breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, story time, and the birth of their firstborns second child) Her husband glanced over at her, obviously understanding better English and clarified to her in Telegu that we would not have time to watch her grow old today and we have to return home in an hour.  “Ok, ok. One hour,” she says.  She said something to the shopkeeper standing close by and left the two little boys with her and we were off.  Neveena was filled with joy that we were coming over to her home. On the walk over to her house I thought about how this would probably never happen at home. You don’t just meet someone in the street, have them invite you to come over to their home at some point, tell them you can come now, and then just go with them. It leaves no time to clean up your house and pretend like things are always more in order than they ever actually are.

            “I am poor, very poor,” Neveena said on the way over. As to warn us for what we might see.  “That’s ok Neveena, we do not mind. We are just happy to spend time with you,” we all said in agreement and really meant it.  We walked down the busy streets until we came to a little “neighborhood” for lack of a better word. It was quiet and winding with little roads that led us up to a small blue gate she would unlock. She went before us, and like any mom, picked up the kids shoes and mess that lay before her shoving them into any open space she could find. We stepped into the small home where there were holes in the roof and mats laid on the floor right where the front door is. This is where the kids sleep every night-in the same area where the usually disarray of normal living happens. She rolled the mats up and invited us to sit down.  She turned on the fans (whew, what a relief) and we commented on how beautiful her home is. She had a hard time accepting compliments so instead she pointed up to the holes on the ceiling and said that every time it rains, it floods.  “We are poor,” she reminded us again, as if the house for a family of 6 that’s size of my bedroom at home didn’t signify that in the first place. But she wasn’t telling us so we would pity her. She was coming from a place of embarrassment and she felt like she owed us some kind of explanation.

She began to boil water on a small portable stove and insisted on making us tea. She nervously clattered pans together, spilling things and explaining that her excitement of us being in her home was causing her to be a mess. We asked her about her kids and her husband, about her arranged marriage, and about her life. We looked at pictures from her wedding day 9 years ago and saw photos of her children- such a proud mother. Neevena is a pleasure to spend time with. She’s a true “proverbs 31 woman.”

Neveena opened up to us and told us that her husband makes a salary of 4,800 rupees, which is about 96 US dollars a month. Her rent is 2,500 and she has school fees that must be paid in order for her children to receive an education. Her eyes moistened up as she said she has to hide when she drops the girls off at school because she will be in trouble for not paying their fees. She explained, shamefully, how she would love to feed us today. To have us back over for dinner, perhaps? But she has no food. She had to borrow a small bag of rice from her sister in law to be able to feed her family today. 

Everyday in India I am overwhelmed by the poverty. By the great need for money, for health, for homes. Everyday there are people who approach me who are blind, who are crippled, who are carrying naked children and begging for money. How can I help every person? Giving money isn’t going to solve their problems. I am well aware of that. Earlier this week I had a child cling to my leg literally begging me for money and I had to shake him off from me and walk away. There is so much corruption here and giving this child money may be funding that corruption. Or it may be starving him? I’m still not sure. There are thousands of people who’s home is on the street and who look at us as Westerners and expect us to make their circumstances different.  I don’t know our role in this. I struggle to find the answer because I know that what they need is much more than a dollar. I struggle because I know that even if I gave them money the chances of them being so far stuck in poverty mindset would probably inhibit them from moving forward with their life anyways. I struggle because I don’t have much money to give. I don’t have the resources to help everyone I see everyday. I struggle a lot here.

            But here I am, in the home of a hard working mother of four and I listen to the innocence of her heart. She never once asked us for anything beyond our friendship. We sipped our tea together and she was overwhelmed that we, white people, were sitting in her home and looking at pictures of her family and caring for her. Our time was coming to an end, but my heart felt burdened.

I have to do something, I thought. But if I give her money, it will just feed the lie that all white, western people will always be able to help. The truth this, I have very little money right now. I tried to explain to Neveena what we do does not give us a salary and how we must trust in God to provide for our needs. We told her that we work everyday and we do not get paid but God provides for us. We told her that today we left our homes to be able to meet someone and that God set up a divine appointment to meet her. That today, God was sending her some help. The language barrier was a problem but she understood the gist of what we were offering to her.

            “NO!” She exclaimed. “I am not asking from you, I just want you to be my friend.” We assured her that we would friends no matter what. Thoughts came flooding through my mind of how I could help. I can buy groceries? I can pay for her kids to have an education? I can give her money? But really, at this time in my life I as well, lack the resources to be able to provide in this way for her. I explained to her what living by faith means and I asked if we could pray for her. “No, no. no. no,” she exclaimed once again.  “I am poor,” as if the state of her income would deny her the right to have prayer. Tears filled her eyes. She felt so undeserving.

 “Sit down, Neveena. Relax. And let us pray for you… God loves you.” We assured her, ”Let us pray for you.”

So she did, and we prayed and Neveena allowed the tears to well up into her eyes and roll down her cheeks. The pain she had to carry around. The burden of being poor. The fear of not being able to feed her children. The shame of not being able to be the wife her husband needs her to be. The loneliness of being a mom and having no one to talk.  It all began to melt, and just for a moment I think Neveena was able to feel the freedom that Christ provides when He says,

"Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest."

We came to a temporary agreement of how we could help her in the day. We could celebrate her sons 4^th birthday. Showing the heart of a true mother, denying herself any pleasure but turning away nothing to better the lives of her children- she agreed. We told her to bring the whole family and meet us at an ice-cream shop up the street from where we first met her.

I guess I get frustrated that money is always expected from Westerners but then I have to wonder why it is expected? Well, we have money. We do. We might not think we do, I certainly don’t feel like I have it-but compared to the conditions that most people spend their entire life in we really live in abundance. So often we hear the cliché that “we are the richest country in the world and most the world lives on one dollar a day.” I think we’ve heard it so much that we stopped caring. But here I am, living it and seeing it. And feeling really pretty helpless about it. It's real.

I don’t really have a happy ending to this story. I know a group of girls are committed to a new friendship with this lovely woman. I know that we will come up with ideas and God will help us help her. I know that. I hope that.

this week in India we...

taught some health care

 gave some health care

some of the beautiful mom's I helped deliver

and of course, delivered some beautiful babies! In fact, we welcomed our 100th baby as a school.

I just wanted to say real quickly that I am truly appreciative of everyone who is reading my blog and being interested in the work I am doing here in India. What I get to be apart of really is amazing but it's not without its challenges. The days are often long and hot and I really miss having a shower and eating food that doesn't include the phrase "rice and curry." I see a lot of injustice and often times I feel pretty helpless. It means a lot to me that people are seeing what I am seeing and they aren't even here. Your passion and support encourages me. I guess what I am really trying to say is, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

there's little things here that my team has been able to find pleasure in- outside of the hospital. We deal with a lot of heaviness and now that we have been in India for over a month we are learning how to make a normal life out of this. I want to be committed, and if I keep thinking this is temporary I can see myself having a hard time accepting it. This week somebody loaned us season 6 of House so 7 of us have been faithfully crowding around a little laptop at night to watch an episode. It's just fun. We usually have Saturdays off and they normally consist of sleeping in and searching desperately for food that's not ....well... Indian. I got a package from my mom this week that had candy corn in it. I opened it on my bed and almost before I could get the package out I had a crowd of Americans around me. Let me tell you- it was like we all opened a package of gold. Thanks Momma! We are all missing what home is like this time of year. We often talk about how much we like to celebrate as Americans.  Halloween, Harvest Festivals, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas and all the parties in between just because. We go all out in our country -and it's  something I've realized the rest of the world just doesn't get as excited for. I have to say, it's probably my favorite thing about our culture. So enjoy the holiday time for me, will ya?

On a completely unrelated side note, I decide to chop off my bangs this week. I was inspired after seeing pictures of my little sister from back at home. A short, sassy fringe is something I have always wanted to try so I thought, why not just give it a go. Half way through my chopping I was reminded that I have a face the size of a peanut and no real way of styling this new sassy fringe. So I just stopped. half way through. Just imagine it. 

Oh, glorious India.