here's a baby!

finally...

There's a baby! It was long and hard but Angela made it...we are going to bed...

I just talked to the future grandmother, who has been up with her daughter all night. They speak Quiche, and she told me that in this idiom, one of the words for "midwife" is the equivalent fo "buyer, negotiator", since she is the person to negotiate the cost of the new life on earth. In the Mayan legends, "Iyom(?)" means grandmother, and also refers to the midwife, who has a big responsibility for the baby to be born.
No wonder the current politics on midwife education are not very successful... they do not take into account the standing of the midwife in the community and the respect she is owed traditionally.

Birth happening

...obviously not at the new center yet, but in Guate, at the Centro de Parto Natural. We have been up in turns during the night, Gabi and I, to look after Angela, an indigenous woman at 42 weeks of pregnancy. She came in at 11.30 pm and now, at 9.00 am, is pushing. The baby is an estimated 9 lbs and Angela is about 150 cms tall...this is still going to take awhile!

Yesterday we chose the colors for painting the future birthcenter&women's clinic in Ciudad Vieja. in the afternoon I had appointments here in the city, and told everybody about the new project...a client says her office is buying new desks and we can have the old ones!
And yesterday Terry from our local ad magazine donated three months worth of classifieds to ask for donations for the project.

We did it! (oh my, what did I get into...)

The silence after the storm! And a storm it was to work with Jessica and Heather. The first two days I was all fired up, the third day I felt that it was not going to happen after all... so much like that that I actually had to remind myself that PPFA would not come down here for fun but that they actually had the intention to get this project started with Us.
But the third day I felt I was tested: my intentions, my ways of working and even my philosophy was put to the test. And I ended up exhausted, dreading the last day of work, fearing that not much of what I had dreamed up would materialize.
In the end almost all of what I had imagined seems to be possible. BUT...it is just going to be Gabi and I. Scary, with so much work! But perhaps we can afford somebody else before the end of the year.
Well, now Heather and Jessica have left and we have a mountain of work ahead: fixing up the house, getting the furniture..oh, yes, if anybody would like to donate, they are more than welcome to. At the same time the legal process has to get started, something I am afraid I will mostly leave to poor Gabi!

Guess who is tired... a long day of planning and discussing. At breakfast at the Macadamia farm, at my house (see Photo!), during lunch at Margaret's and back again in the afternoon at my house.
We went to see the future birth center in the morning, and everybody was impressed, though slightly scared about the rent. I can see things coming together, but the scariest part still lies ahead: the budget! I can see more staff being needed, which hopefully also fits in the budget! I'll know soon enough!

Actually working on it!

OK, this was the first day of work. Heather and Jessica from PPFA so far are very helpful,meaning that they actually encourage me to think things through and to believe in what we are planning together. My head is spinning though with all the questions and ideas they are planting in my mind. We are even considering hiring another person...it looks BIG! Like in : a BIG breakthrough for midwifery?
Tomorrow I'll take the camera and take the first pictures of the future clinic...and of Us, working on the project!