Casa de Sion

Thought you all might find this interesting and also understand my desires to help pregnant women. First before you read the article. let me tell you we got 8 new children this week. Four from a mom who can not support them, all stairstep boys ages 4 to 10, two boys ages 4 and 6, whose mom has taken up with a new alcoholic and can not feed the kids, and two more boys ages 4 months and 1 year, whose mom we think is doing prostitution. She came with the mom of Abraham, Diego and Anna and their mom was beat to a pulp. She is definitely doing prostitution. Some really good news. Abraham is walking and now comes up to me and tugs at my pants and goes abuela, abuela the whole time I am at the hogar. Anna and Diego have started kindie.
We have heard that there are many abandoned babies in the hospitals now that adoptions have closed down in Guatemala. We verified this from several sources. Our social worker will be talking with some of the hsopital social workers on Mon. The orphanages that used to take them won't any more as they can not make money off adoption. I will take some, but need the financial help of all of you. We have also heard stories that some of the smaller orphanages are turning thier kids into the government as they can not afford to keep going.
Well here is the article on what birth is like for the Mayan women that live around the lake.
The Crisis Pregnancy centers in GA, USA donated many items to help these women. We are so grateful. Also we have some sterile birthing kits coming the end of the month to give to the midwives. Also we had tour groups recently who left enough money to pay for a stove, a double stroller, shoes and bunkbeds for the new kids. We could not do this without you.

ARTICLE ON CHILDBIRTH AMONG THE MAYANS
Childbirth isn't an easy process for any woman, but an article I came across this morning highlights the problems women, mostly Indigenous women, face in rural Guatemala. Part of the problem is poverty, made worse by machista attitudes towards pregnancy and childbirth
....in Guatemala, where 1 in every 71 women who becomes pregnant during her lifetime dies from causes associated with pregnancy, delivery and the postpartum period. In the Latin America-Caribbean region that's second only to Haiti, where the risk is 1 in 44. Often women in difficult labor are carried down in a hammock by menfrom the 16-family community, a journey that takes about two hours. Once they reach the nearest passable road, they could try to flag down a ride. But more often they would still have to walk the rest of the way as well, taking at least another four hours.

A recent trip by the The U.N. Population Fund identified four demoras, literally delays, that contribute to the maternal health crisis.
First, the woman and her caregivers don't always recognize that there's a problem in time to act.
Second, once a problem is recognized, the woman often seeks thepermission of her husband, mother-in-law or other family member to go to the doctor or hospital. If she doesn't get it, she doesn't go.
Third--and widely agreed to be the most difficult to change--are thelogistics of lining up proper transport. Small communities often onlyhave one vehicle.
The fourth demora is making sure that women receive proper attentiononce they reach the hospital. If a clinic does not deliver top-notchcare, a woman's health may be endangered even if she makes it to thehospital.Some of the solutions being offered up seem logical, like using local midwives, training them to recognize signs of problems, and providing them with clean birthing kits. But instead of attempting to do some sort of mass education campaign so that women take charge of their own health decisions, community men are being trained to step in to urge women to seek help and are even armed with the power to give permission for the women to seek help.
I understand the need to deal with the immediate, provide sanitary conditions, create more local birthing centers, set up transport systems, etc. but once those problems are adequately dealt with, I still fear women waiting to get the go ahead from their male partners to take care of themselves.
Via / Women's e News
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