Marion’s Update From Uganda
Marion Toepke McLean, who has written Marion’s Message from Issue #1 in
Midwifery Today is serving in Uganda for 2 months. She has retired from her job
at Planned Parenthood but not from Midwifery Today! She is my mentor and my
friend. Love, Jan Tritten
I got to catch another baby. The
midwife wasn't feeling real well, and the baby was thought to be large
(actually he was a bit over 8 lb, but there was lots and lots of clear fluid,
which made her belly look bigger and she reported her previous child as having
been 9-1/2 lb). Also, she took quite a while to push, considering it was her
third child. So, at her request, I was happy to come and help.
When I arrived, I found just a
thin anterior lip, the mom with a major spontaneous pushing effort, and a head
of black hair just becoming visible. I pushed back the lip—she didn't make a
bit of complaint about that. Had to push it back a second time a few pushes
later, then she brought him down steadily. The whole second stage was 1 hour
and 15 minutes long, from when she was first called complete—this was when her
bag of waters broke—to the birth. He was born 45 minutes after I came in.
You know, most of the births here
just pop out. They tend to have smaller babies than we do at home, 7 lb or
7-1/2 lb is what we commonly see, which of course is plenty big enough! But we
have so many big babies in the US, and I felt totally comfortable with the
progress of the mother.
Anyway, it is a treat for me to
have my name down in the birth log as “midwife” for the second time out of the
12 births here since my arrival! I helped one of
our midwifery assistants create her own e-mail account this evening, that was
pretty exciting as well!
Love to all, Marion
Read some of Marion's articles: