Christian Childbirth Blog

If you live in the USA, chances are you wash your hands. You probably don’t wash them as often as you think you should, but you wash them. Reading this may even make you feel guilty, that you should really go wash your hands now because it’s been a while and your hands are probably covered with germs.

Chances are you’ve known about the benefits of hand washing since you were a child. Your mother probably taught you to wash your hands after every trip to the bathroom, before you eat, after having played outside – all the ritual times.  I’m sure your mother took hand washing very seriously, because if she didn’t your health could suffer.  You learned to share her concern, you learned how important hand washing is to being healthy.

Now suppose I were to tell you hand washing didn’t make you healthy. Suppose I told you it wasn’t the hand washing, but something else that was at work. Suppose I told you to stop doing your hand-washing because it was a waste of time and energy, and took your focus off the real source of health. Could you do it? Could you stop washing your hands? Could you change your habits, your thoughts and your fears about what will happen if you don’t wash your hands?

I feel I should admit I’m a hand washer. Not only do I practice hand washing, but I act as a sort of leader of the hand washing movement. I share with others the benefits of hand washing. I explain the reasons they should, and the dangers if they do not. But because you and I are probably in agreement that hand washing is a good health behavior, arguing that you should wash your hands wouldn’t cause you to raise an eyebrow.

But if I argued against hand washing, if I tried to convince you it was all superstition and blind faith – do you feel your reaction to that? Do you feel the disbelief? Do you start to get annoyed, frustrated or angry? Do you start searching for support for your hand washing ways? Do you immediately try to prove me wrong? Do you immediately decide I’m not worth listening to? Do you feel how deep a blow to your basic belief system strikes?

I wanted to share this feeling with you because I wanted you to understand that culture and beliefs are not simple things to change. It is often not enough to go to an area and tell the locals how they should live their lives. In fact, that is often the worst thing you can do to improve global health because instead of improving situations, it makes them worse. If you feel called to make change in international maternal health issues, you need to understand this basic truth. You need to understand the magnitude of the changes you propose. You must have empathy for the struggles, both internal and system wide, that happen when change begins.

I am not a person who believes that life with God is easy.  In fact, I pretty much expect it to be difficult.  I believe this because the stories I read of the heroes in the Bible are not stories of God finding favor and making life easy.  They are stories of difficult choices, leaving family and heading into the unknown.  They are stories of personal challenges and being pushed out of your comfort zone.  It is easy for us to see them as happy stories because we know the ending. But I never want to lose sight of the reality that someone, some real person, had to go through that struggle before they got to the happy ending part.

I say this because midwifery school is NOT easy. Making everything balance and staying on top of my course work is hard. It challenges me intellectually but it also challenges me emotionally.  It forces me to gain faith that I can perform these skills and that I do know this information.  It forces me to move out of what I know to learn the things I don’t know.  It forces me to move from observer to responsible midwife. And some days this hurts.

The hardest part is staying focused on the reason I am in school. When it gets difficult it is hard to remember that I am here because God sent me.  I am here because God wants midwives for women I have never met. I am here because God needs me to go through this learning process so I can be prepared to do the work set out before me.  But I don’t remember that when I am overwhelmed with the reading and stressing over tests.

Perhaps struggling to keep God in focus is part of the learning I need to do before I can accomplish this work. Nothing God has called me to is easy, and I am sure midwifery school will seem simple compared to the health and government issues I will need to face. Perhaps I need to be prepared to handle more stress, being more out of control of my choices, letting go of what I think needs to be done. Perhaps I need to learn to see God in the midst of the work, in the midst of the chaos and struggles because if I do not learn to be with him when life is hard, I cannot go overseas.

I don’t know, its just some thoughts that popped into my head tonight.

For those of you interested in international work, I’ve found a great new resource.  It is called Gapminder, and it allows you to graph health and development indicators from around the world.  Why is this so great?  Because many people have a rather historical view of the world we live in. Want to know what I mean?  Watch this 20 minute lecture by Hans Rosling on the changing data for global development indicators.

Life isn’t always milk and honey, but you may be surprised by just how much “progress” the world has been making. And if you are being called to international work, I challenge you to spend some time exploring the date for the country or region you are made to serve.  Find out what progress has been made and what work is still being done.  You may just find yourself staring at your future.

Many blessings.

I tend to be less of a Christian critic than many of my contemporaries.  I have been given the gift of acceptance from God, and I pass that gift onto others. It has been a long growing process, when I first became a Christian I believed I could tell who was heaven bound by the words they spoke or the things they did. Today I am hesitant to claim any knowledge of specific in or out decisions. This started a somewhat heated discussion with my husband a few weeks ago.

He has a much more firm standard of Christianity than I do, he has an in and out list.  I suggested he leave those decisions to God.  He suggested I be careful what I believe. I explained that accepting that I my not be the ultimate authority in what God expects of his people was OK with me. He explained that God expects us to have different relationships with those who do not believe. I explained that accepting people did not mean I beleived everything they believed. He explained that if I found problems with their beliefs perhaps I needed to question why I thought they were Christian. Yes, it was a long night. And true to form, I think we both has some legitimate points.

My main point was that the Christianity I know, United States at the change of the millennium, is only one type of Christianity. I explained that Christians in other countries may not subscribe to the standard US list of dos and don’ts. I explained that for most of history Christian’s didn’t even have access to their own copy of the Bible, and were probably illiterate anyway, but is their Christianity any less pleasing to God than mine? I explained that I am not accepting of everything as truth, but I am willing to accept the potential in Christian practices of other cultures. I am willing to seek the truth from God and to learn from those whose Christianity looks a little different from mine.

Last week my husband brought me a book he had read a few years prior. He said he had been thinking about a comment from the book ever since our discussion. In the book, the author shares that if I, as a modern Christian, were given the opportunity to travel to medieval times to visit with Christians of that era, they would never accept me as a Christian. My beliefs would not line up with theirs. For starters, I believe the Earth revolves around the sun. I believe the Earth is not the center of the universe. My clothing would be considered completely immodest and offer proof of my prostitution. And though we know know these things are not true, they made complete sense to the science and religion of that day and to suggest otherwise made me guilty of  heresy. I am simply not a Christian when the standard is medieval Christianity.

I mention these things, because when you offer yourself as a Christian providing services for other Christians, you must accept that not everyone who considers themselves a Christian will believe all the things you believe. This will leave you with two choices, either you decide they are not really a Christian (and it will come across in your attitude, voice and words), or you relax your standard and accept that just like you they are seeking to know Christ better.

I am not suggesting you have no standards for your Christianity. But I am suggesting that if you want to work with other Christian families you broaden your definition of what it looks like to actively seek to serve Christ. In that way, not only do you give the other families the best opportunity to grow in Christ, but you also allow yourself the best opportunity to learn more about who God is and what he desires of you.

I had a lovely time meeting with some fellow students to discuss international service opportunities, when one of the women reminded us that because of the surrounding city we have the opportunity to serve many international communities only a few miles from home.

Interesting.  This point had been brought up in my global health class last week as well.  ”People think of global health as aid to developing countries, when in reality it is about combining efforts to deal with problems that span borders.  You want to work to eradicate AIDS in Africa, that’s great.  But don’t forget there is a 5 mile square plot of land here in Atlanta with a higher per capita AIDS rate than any country in Africa” (at least my professor says there is).

I receive many questions from women who want to work to make childbirth safer in developing countries.  But the truth is that no matter where you live you will find the same issues; poverty, hunger, abuse, illness; they may just be hidden better where you live.  By serving in your local community, you can make a difference in global health issues.  So volunteer to work with the expectant women in your local domestic violence shelter; serve meals to families through pantries and soup kitchens; volunteer to mentor a pregnant teen. Expectant women need more than just someone to catch their baby, and health depends on so many more issues than just access to insurance.

Your leadership may make it possible for your church to begin a program to meet the needs in your community, but it doesn’t have to.  Your time will make a difference to the individual families you work with.  And God knows when you can be trusted with a little, he can trust you with bigger tasks.

I didn’t start in Africa, and I’m not there now.  I started volunteering to watch children in a domestic violence shelter so their mothers could attend counseling.  I then became a childbirth educator and provided free classes to single women and teens. I trained as a doula to serve those same women, and trained others to serve them too.   I provided free information about birth online. I accepted the call to organize a day of prayer for childbirth.  And after all that, God said I was ready and called me to… nursing school.  I’m making a difference in the world, and I’m still in my home country obeying the call of God to serve women and families.

And every day he will trust me with  more.

As Christian’s we care about the people around us, whether that be in our neighborhood or the other side of the world.  I have seen some fantastic work make life-changing differences, and I have seen single focus plans leave areas with less hope.

It seems to me there are two motivations that drive Christian’s participation with the world. One reason is the desire for justice and mercy, to help those who are unable to help themselves.  The other reason is to introduce others to Christianity.  Each individual seems to have a combination of both, with one being slightly (or intensely) the stronger motivation. I suppose the motivation you have is part of the unique individual God has created you to be, and using that motivation allows you to fulfill the tasks God created for you.

I have been created with the desire for justice and mercy as the stronger motivation.  This not only encourages me to do what I do, but also gives me a certain perspective when I find out about problems and initiatives.  I mention this because I want to be sure it is understood that my heart to serve others does not mean I have no heart for others to know Christ.  I also mention it because I want to be sure all readers, those motivated by sharing Christ and those motivated by justice and mercy, feel welcome to share their thoughts about the two articles I read this morning.

You see, we don’t always understand the effect we have when we work in a culture different from our own.  For example, Surrogate Mothering has become a big business in India.  Women from around the wealthy world come to hire poor young Indian women to give birth for them. On the surface this seems a win/win situation – families get babies and poor women are given a job.  I hope it works more often than it doesn’t, because the article points to some real problems with the process for the poor women.  This makes sense, the process is designed for the adoptive families.  The poor women are really just a commodity being sold.

There are different ways to encourage the young and poor to delay marriage and childbirth. The article explains a few of the problems caused by paying families to delay marriage and children.  The author feels their system empowers the community. What is their program?  Promoting child spacing and educating about the dangers of early marriage and childbearing.  It does seem to be working, but I think it needs to be pointed out that even this strategy is changing the culture.  But that is what the promoters wanted – to change the culture so there would be no pressure for early marriage or childbearing. This is where I smile, because Christian missionaries throughout history have gotten a bum rap for trying to change culture. I suppose the difference is that when you take “religion” out of the mix, it is easier to convince everyone else that what you are doing is really for the people’s own good.

It is a tricky business to go into a country and try to make the people of that country accept what you believe is right. It’s tricky business to write about birth and try to make women of your own country accept what you believe is right. I could not find any information about the program that did not come from the organization that started it, so essentially we have to take their word on it.  But there is a part of me that wonders just how much trouble the people of that community are having as this outside organization tries to get them in-line with their accepted standards of family and fertility.

For the record, I know outcomes are better if the women wait to have children.  I also understand that the early marriages probably mean the girls have no real option.  But I do think there are solutions that would allow the people to make changes while respecting their culture, and those solutions would be determined by working hand in hand with the community rather than being decided by outsiders. What do you think?  What kind of programs would you like to see encouraging safe fertility around the world?