Reporting from Les Cayes, Haiti

December 22
 
As the providers at HIC (i.e. the nurses) have become more comfortable with me and my abilities I’ve slowly begun to help teach the nursing students who are present during my shifts. This week I got to help a couple of the students do deliveries, which were rewarding experiences, though ones I’m not (yet) totally comfortable with. In many ways I still feel like a student myself—I graduated from nursing school in May 2012 and this is my first job practicing as a “real” (as opposed to “student”) midwife—and so it’s a bit odd for me to already be put in a teaching role. That said, I really do enjoy guiding the students and helping them grow more confident with and skilled in catching babies.
 


Nursing students in uniform before their graduation


One of the hardest things about trying to teach here is that there are some birthing practices that are standard in Haiti that aren’t viewed as best practice in the U.S./developed world (i.e. they always clamp and cut the cord immediately, in the U.S. it’s recommended to typically wait at least 2 min, they perform perineal massage while pushing, in the U.S. that’s not recommended, they perform episiotomies very frequently, most midwives in the U.S. perform them very rarely). So although I may be coaching a student through a delivery, advising her using recommendations from the U.S., often times one of the nurses will “correct” the student and tell her to do something very different than what I’ve just said. So that is sometimes frustrating for both the student and me. I’ve now started saying, “in the U.S. we do this” and trying to explain why I recommend doing something “my” way versus the “Haitian” way. And after hearing my explanations and watching me practice, some of the providers/students are slowly adopting at least the delayed cord clamping, which I’m happy about.
 
This week I was doing the admitting paperwork on a woman who came in in labor. I know how to ask some basic questions in Creole (How old are you? What’s your name? How many babies do you have? etc) and so went through those with her.  For the more “complicated” question (Where were you born?) I switched to French, hoping she knew how to speak it—which she did. Her reply—Jamaica—surprised me, and prompted for me to ask her if she spoke English—which she did also. So throughout my night laboring with this woman we had conversations in a mix of Creole, French, and English, which made me smile. I know for Haitians and most people around the world speaking multiple languages is nothing exciting—and I mélange French and Creole normally with all my patients—but having that English thrown in (with her great accent to boot) was a treat.