When in Haiti...

I am keeping a blog of my trip to Haiti but blogger won't let me copy it into here, so you must follow my link to Operation Haiti to read it.

Haitian Donations

Eights days until my return to Haiti. I look forward to seeing Port au Prince again, and also traveling into the mountains to Leogone (the epicenter of the earthquake). I don't know what to expect, so I have no expectations. I know things will not be very different from what I encountered before. Our final team includes two students, one other nursing instructor, a photographer, and myself. We are small but mighty. We will be delivering medical supplies to our hosts (Heart to Heart International), and cloth diapers and cloth sanitary napkins to a courier who will take them to Maisson de Naissance, a birthing center several hours outside of Port au Prince. We also will bring gifts of clothing to an orphanage. If I raise enough funds, I will also take a refurbished laptop to my former interpreter, Kicki, to use as he grows his cyber cafe business. The outpouring of support for this trip has been phenomenal. A group of ladies in central Missouri has hand sewn all the sanitary napkins for us (Thank you Womb Room). The Phi Beta Kappa of Brown Mackie held a fundraiser all of July and purchased 300 cloth diapers for us to donate. We held a big fundraiser party with drummers and dancers and donated Haitian food (thanks Women of the Drum, Lon Lane's Inspired Occasions, and Josie's Sweet Treats) and raised $500. Between our fundraiser events and our individual donation solicitations, we have raised over $4,000 for this trip. We have also made wonderful new friends. Joseph and Glory Idalbert are Haitian Americans who run a local nonprofit to assist their fellow Haitians with adjustment to American life. They offer language classes and job training. We reached out to their organization, Glory House Services, and found our local link to the Haitian community of Kansas City. Joseph and Glory accepted a donation of 3 large crates of infant and children's clothing that we could not carry into Haiti due to the limits of what we could carry. We hope folks will be content to know that even though their donations didn't make it to Haiti, they will benefit Haitians. I also met Captain Jose Belardo of the Public Service Corps. I visited with him before my March trip to Haiti and now he will make a presentation to our group to prepare us for the diseases we will see and how to treat them. It has been an amazing ride, preparing for this trip. I didn't know we would impact so many- and we haven't even left yet. I was asked to prepare a presentation for a meeting of college presidents of all the Brown Mackie Colleges around the country. I made a plea for service learning to be incorporated into all the nursing curriculums. We are planning a joint party with Glory House Services when we return to share our experience and everything we learned. Never could I have imagined that a single thought I had while in Haiti back in March (to bring my nursing students back to Haiti with me) would yield such a response. If you want to keep up with the trip as it happens, visit our website where we post daily at http://www.operationhaiti.webs.com/ It is a fitting present on my 48th birthday today, to reflect back on what has transpired over the past seven months to make this trip happen. I just love to see vision made manifest.

Clinical Lactation

It's official. There's a new journal in town. It was revealed last week at the ILCA conference by Kathleen Kendall-Tackett. Clinical Lactation is a new peer reviewed journal specifically geared towards lactation consultants. I am honored to have been selected to be on their Editorial Review Board. Clinical Lactation becomes the second of its kind after the Journal of Human Lactation (another favorite read of mine). I'm excited about this new adventure in my life and look forward to receiving my first article for review. Thank you to Kathleen and the other editors for this honor.

Team Haiti

The return trip to Haiti is well under way. It is not as I envisioned it at all. It is better. I don't have a final head count yet as to who all is going, but there will be about 6 student nurses and 4-5 nurses and maybe a physician on our team. We are being hosted by Heart to Heart International. We will work for a week in their clinic and stay at their house in Port Au Prince. They will provide room, board, transportation to and from the clinic, and interpreters, all for $25 a day per person. We have many organizations collecting (or making) items for us to take with us to give away such as diapers and vitamins. We also have a couple of fundraisers underway and a grant pending. I put up a facebook event page and started a website for the trip. (operationahaiti.webs.com) The project has grown so big, it has taken on a life of it's own. I'm very excited to be a part of this project, and of course I can't wait to return to Haiti. Students are putting together their applications to submit by the end of the week. I'm working on a book signing fundraiser event with a local author and a superb caterer. It's so much fun to put this all together and watch it happen. The best part will be to see lives transform through international medical/humanitarian service.

Scenes from the Holy Land

I spent a recent weekend in seclusion at my friend, Morningstar's retreat center in the Ozarks. I enjoyed silence, worked in her gardens, read, feasted on vegetarian meals, and rested my soul for the work ahead.

Pictures: Morningstar's tipi where she holds many of her ceremonies, the Gaia Garden, Casita: my cabin in the woods, Morningstar's home: Rose Cottage, a view of the meadow that includes a vegetable garden that helps to feed us.

My times of silence and solitude become more important to me as the work load grows heavier. I am grateful for times of refreshment.

Haiti Here We Come- Again

Just recieved permission from the powers that be, that taking nursing students to Haiti has been approved! This will be such a great experience for them. Now the fundraising can begin. It's a little too soon to recruit students, that will begin next month. For now, I'm seeking foundations who would be willing to let me apply for grant monies to cover student expenses, and any other simple, yet effective fundraising ideas. The trip is set for the end of September. Now to make it happen...

Some Things Never Change

As I gave my Haiti presentation to the local doula group on Monday, I tried to explain the beauty of birth as I saw it manifested in the Haitian women as they birthed their babies. What struck me was a story I have not yet shared about my experience in Haiti on this blog. The story of how 'some things never change.' I was at the hospital on day 4 with one of the American midwives. She was quite a lively animated person, and I enjoyed both talking with her and watching her work. I could tell she loved being a midwife- she was really into birth. She really showed me what was possible and under her tutelage I saw the most remarkable things. Well we were in the thick of laboring a woman. She was dilated to 9, and we had her in the small delivery room along with her aunt and cousin to help her (her cousin spoke English so we used her as our interpreter). She was all over the floor laboring in the most amazing positions, really working hard and effectively bringing her baby down. I was utterly amazed by this labor and how well this woman was working. Then he came. The Haitian obstetrician chose this time to make his rounds. He spoke English and was young and handsome (looked a hellava lot like Taye Diggs). He swooped down on the unit we had been running all day and started to take over. The midwife was miffed to say the least. Prior to his arrival she had given me this sweet little speech about how we were guests here in Haiti and should not behave like colonialists and take over everything. However when that Haitian OB came in and told the family members to leave and our patient to get off the floor and up on the delivery table, I could see the mama bear come out of this tiny little woman. She got right up in the doctors face and said, "Is this my patient or your patient?" She wanted to know who was going to do the delivery. They toussled for a while, there was some give and take. My midwife shook her finger in his face, 'don't you cut her' (referring to the routine episiotomy she thought her patient might get from him.) We slowly allowed the aunt and cousin back in. However we also got the patient on the table and put in an IV at the doctor's request. The doctor had brought along a little patient he intended to do a cesarean on, and I prepped her for surgery as well. While he was over in the main hospital building preparing his OR, our patient delivered, with her female relatives at her bedside coaxing her on. It was a fantastic birth, that almost didn't happen that way. It was because the midwife did the very thing she said she would not (get all colonialist on his ass) in an effort to protect her patient. How many times do we as midwives, doulas, nurses have to put our bodies between the patient and the physician to protect birth and keep it sacrosanct? I could feel the burden of this midwife. I too wanted him to get the hell out of our little delivery cocoon and leave us be. Technically these were his patients. Technically his western-infused ideas about how to conduct safe childbirth came from his American-influenced education. He was puzzled by why and how we were allowing sacred space for this woman to birth in her own body in her own way. He only knew his way, the way he had been taught, the way that didn't allow for individualities of person or cultures. (By the way, this application of western medical values into third world realities leads to some pretty brutal births- think pit induction without epidurals, or cesarean births without post op pain meds.) I understand that a lot of physicians Haitian, American, and otherwise think this mechanization of birth is the key to good outcomes. I understand it, I just don't happen to agree. Watching my little midwife go toe to toe with that physician reminded me that some things just never change- without a revolution. And in the midst of revolution you may find yourself saying and doing things you thought you never would.