“No one likes a bully” they are aggressive jerks!  Bullies are found everywhere!  Bullies are defined as people who use intimidation and sarcasm to “get their way” and “in their minds” they somehow believe they have the authority to demean anther person.  Bullies are self-governed by their narcissistic motivation to elevate themselves.  Bullies actually get satisfaction when they belittle another individual.  The bully will do anything and everything they can verbally to tear down another person. They do this by laughing at them, not listening, interrupting and even “telling them off”.  Bullies thrive on being right and letting everyone know it!

Everyday while working with women,  I listen to stories from clients  about how they believe they failed at birth.  I hear words like ” failure, wimp, didn’t try, “they made me get an epidural”, and “not a ‘real’ natural birth”.  They will tell their “birth story” and over and  the common thread of defeat is ” I feel like a failures” because they did not experience birth like their friends, co-worker, and family.  Women will talk of a so called “friend having a painless easy birth” and question why they could have them same, they must have failed.  The feelings of failure arise from conversations whereas women challenge each other on their birth options and outcomes.  Often, one can hear the conversations “well I had my baby at__________, why would you ever think of anything else? If you go to that facility  ____________they will _______, and _________, or ________.”

Sometimes one can hear ” that can’t be safe”……. or ”you’re crazy to consider that”

Just fill in the blanks, it can be fun.  No matter where you are the birth bullies try to make their personal opinion and outcome the one that is best for others.  It can be such a strong influence that one can feel reject and like a failure if they don’t even try what the bully suggests.  Bullies often use fear to make to coercive their opinion.  They will attempt scare you into believing that options are not options by using the biggest scare tactic of all, “they will take your baby”.

My philosophy is that all babies are born.  Think about it -they are born.  Very few are born in a “blissful breathing baby out with harmonious singing and happiness and no pain.”  This is not the norm, and it definitely doesn’t happen often.   Believe it or not, in our world today, over 90% of all  babies are born as “natural .”    The birth itself  is also one of the most powerful athletic events of all times!  This event surpass all team sports,  olympics,  gold medals and trophies.  This event uses an entire body to rhythmically and gently move a living being out of another. Yes, there is pain, exhaustion, physical, mental and emotional work and most importantly there is great reward.  Birth requires training, health, and strength, it is not for wimps, failures, and cowards. Even bullies can give birth!

Every athlete in our world endures pain, training, exhaustion and reward.  Athletes need encouragement, coaches, trainers and the cheering audience, not bullies.   GOD’s plan was for women to be the champions.  He chose women because they are strong, wise, fearless and able to complete the task.  Each women who desires and is chosen to given birth will win and receive the prize!  It is a miraculous event that can happen.  BIRTH IS FOR CHAMPIONS -NO BULLIES ALLOWED.

The bible describes the evilness of the tongue in Psalms 52, reading the the tongue is deceitful, devises destruction like a two edgedsword.   Reading these scriptures one can understand how words can be so painful that the cut to the heart of an individual. Our words to one another are very strong, and can either uplift or tear one down.  I am challenging myself and you to champion positive influencing words to empower women in having an INCREDIBLE BIRTH DAY!

“Cathy, Cathy, please come here, hurry, you have got to see this” were the words from Dr. William Smock (Bill). I was working in our small pharmacy preparing vitamins and malaria medications to be given to every woman and child presenting when Bill frantically began calling my name.
“In here”, I shouted as I finished a bag of vitamins and reached for another. We had at least 400 people coming today, much work to accomplish.
“Cathy, come on, you won’t believe this” he said as he burst through the doors reaching for my arm. I jumped up and followed him into one of the small clinic rooms at the Makoko Center in Musoma, Tanzania.
As I entered the room my eyes shifted to a small boy sitting on the exam table. His rounded black Tanzanian face looked downward, a red hue of color gleam his hair as he perched his massively deformed right leg onto his left. My eyes focused as I drew closer to him; obviously afraid he did not lift his eyes to mine he looked down, and the only movement I could see from him was the slow rising and falling of his chest with each small breath he took. His lower right leg was obviously fractured, swollen and growly deformed. Protruding through his pants was a white object about 6 inches long and a good2cm in diameter.
“What is the impelled object in his leg Bill?” I asked.
“It is his tibia, Cathy” Bill replied. Stunned I moved closer at the small framed boy who appeared to be around 5 years old. It was obvious that his tibia, the larger of the two lower leg bones was protruding through his leg. The bone was dry, white and no longer had a blood supply. It was malformed and out of place. The smell of gangrene and necrosis filled my nostrils as I assessed his injury, an obvious old injury.
Bill, rubbing his balding head, took a deep breath and added “this boy needs surgery, he will die, he needs his leg amputated”.
“Silence filled the air, I then said; let me call Dr. Ayoub Sayeg, a plastic surgeon who had joined our team from Dearborn, MI. “he may be willing to aid here”. Dr. S was currently working at another clinic doing reconstructive surgeries. The OR he was using had been closed for months by the Tanzanian government for a variety of reasons. He was working with local anesthesia and spinal blocks. There was no general anesthesia available in the area, not even the main governmental hospital. Our surgical team consisted of Dr. S., Dr. Elizabeth Mcghee from Ortonville, MI, and Kim Harter, a labor & delivery nurse from Wichita, KS. The team was actually perfect, as Dr. Mcghee was very experienced in the OR and Kim as an OR nurse for cesarean sections in the states. Their biggest obstacles were no general anesthesia and managing comfort for all the people they served.
I walked out of the room to find a phone to call Dr. S., and much to my amazement; they just entered the Makoko Center clinic to check in with us. I was so surprised to see them, we were not planning to see them until dark for a variety of reasons, mainly to get the best use of daylight hours. Plus trying to call someone seemed problematic because not everyone has a phone, nor are they readily available, frustration easily mounts just trying to reach them through translators, let alone finding car to take you or use, coupled with poor roads adds to communication faux paux, plus a variety of other developing country issues. One could consider this a coincidence of them walking in the building at this time; we now view this as a “god thing”, or intervention, maybe even Miracle #1.
The surgical team assessed the boy. Dr. S. stated “I can do this”. Looking back, we smile at his confidence and courage, knowing that the mountain he agreed to trek maybe very difficult to climb.
We admitted the small boy to the Makoko Center clinic/hospital for overnight antibiotics and surgical preparation. His mother is briefed by the team, using translators to discuss the needed surgery, antibiotics, outcomes and she agreed immediately. The boy was prepared, not like other surgical patients in the USA, only like those in Tanzania. Kim placed an IV in his hand and administered antibiotics. She instructed them not to let him eat or drink anything past dark, not realizing at the time, the boy or his mother had not eaten for over two days as it was. His fractured leg and open wound was not prepared for surgery with betadine scrub and sterile technique; it remained untouched, his bone still emerging from his soiled pants awaiting the needed surgery.
We all ask for God to intervene…..

Part II the mothers story
Part III the surgery coming soon…………for more information about participating on a medical Missions Outreach reach, please contact Matt at Matt.Gordon@mercyandtruth.com

According to the World Health Organization, the African Region is the most effected by malaria and accounts for about 86% of the estimated 247 millions malaria episodes worldwide in 2006 and 91 % of the malaria deaths the same year. MALARIA REMAINS THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN AFRICA. It is recommended that EVERY WOMAN be TREATED for MALARIA during her prenatal care. Unfortunately, many women can not afford prenatal care therefore the goal is to have a minimum of TWO prenatal visits to receive needed medications.
In countries like Tanzania, the sub Saharan areas, everyone is assumed to have Malaria. Yes, we challenged this assumption and began to test everyone who presented with complaints including every pregnant women. We are taught as health care providers to not prescribe medications unless they are really needed. Knowing that medications are toxins released in the body to combat disease, a health care provider will withhold treatment often to assure they are targeting the disease correctly. When the lab results cam back to us in about 30 minutes,100% of the malaria screens were positive. It is true that the majority of Africans have malaria. Therefore those women who are pregnant are assumed also positive for Malaria and this can effect the baby.

Upon arrival into Tanzania one of the very first purchases we made was medications used for ingenious ailments such as malaria. We purchased enough doses that over 1000 people received treatment. Every woman presenting for prenatal care received prenatal vitamins, iron, malaria treatment, worm treatment and treatment for another parasite called shistoshimaisis.
Pictured here is baby Essa. Baby Essa is exactly one month old in this picture and struggling with Malaria. His liver and spleen are so enlarged that he struggles to breath. He has a high fever, and is too weak to nurse. He was dying. His mother had hope. Our team partner with the local clinic in providing him treatment for the malaria.
We monitored and aided him for 48 hours. Slowly baby Essa improved.

Les Amis de Naissance will be putting together backpacks to place in the hands of every midwife. Our desire is to include in these backpacks medications needed to treas women before they give birth for ailments such as Malaria. We can not do this project alone nor tackle the huge beast of Malaria. WE can only move forward one step at a time, treating one person at a time as we meet and know them each. However, partnering with as many other organizations and people as possible–we can make a difference. One at a time……maybe baby Essa will live….live to be the leader of his country someday.

Just returning to the US from Tanzania, I find myself tired, cold (we worked in temperatures ranging from 60-80 F) and jet lagged; however, I feel compelled to share the voice of many Tanzanian women during our holiday season. This voice echoes in my heart and will never leave me. The people of Tanzania do not celebrate Christmas like most Americans. There are no Christmas trees, lights, and even the exchange of gifts. There is not a market for Hallmark Cards, Santa Claus and Christmas music simply because the people are poor, much unlike the poor in America. They have no money to purchase gifts, lights and Christmas tress. They celebrate Christmas in prayer, supplication and attending church in hopes of receiving a meal. The “hidden voice” I heard every day, day after day, during the holiday season in Tanzania was hopelessness.

The women of Tanzania have no hope. Their hope and voice is to hold their babies, watch them grow, go to school and become someone important. We as mothers in the USA also want our babies to grow up and be “someone”, maybe the president of the United States; we have hope in our children.

In Tanzania, mothers desire to see their children to live, grow up and get jobs, end the pain, hardships and poverty in their homeland. Unfortunately, according to the world health organization, 1 in 5 never reach the age of one year old. I learned that babies in Tanzania who are “born too soon” are left abandoned, to die. Let me explain more detailed of what I mean. If a baby is born less than term, which is defined as 37 weeks or more, they are laid aside to die. The health care providers tell the families there is NO HOPE for your baby to live, therefore abandon them… go home. Mothers leave clinics and makeshift hospitals with empty arms because their babies were born too soon….too soon.

Hearing these words, I was speechless. saddened, and desired to teach them how to save their babies. Babies born at 26 weeks in the USA are living now without compromise!!!!!

The bible reads that there is HOPE FOR THE HOPELESS and this is our call to action. The non-profit Les Amis de Naissance will be focusing on bringing hope to the hopeless mothers to hold their babies, also training and supplies to the health care providers. We will not abandon these babies; we will fight for their right to life. Every mother deserves to have a safe birth and hope for their babies to live.

Over the next few weeks I will add to the blog on HOPE and what happened during this outreach to bring hope to the hopeless in Tanzania.

This year during the holidays I will be focusing on a people group who have much more need than the average American. About 10 years ago, while I was working on a medical mission in Kenya, I met a young pastor named Daniel Ouma. He asked me at that time to come to his homeland and be of service. We have corresponded in several emails over the years and it was most recently that he cries for help quickened my heart into bringing a team of health care providers to his home and church called the Valley Of blessings, in Musoma Tanzania. His cry for was for the people of his large congregation and his own wife who were loosing babies in childbirth and many women were also dying. His cry is for life, the life of his two baby twins as well as the many babies who had died before they came home and the many women who were dying around him, all in childbirth related illnesses.
The world Health organization reports the following Key Facts:
Every day, approximately 1000 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
Maternal mortality is higher in rural areas and among poorer and less educated communities.
Adolescents face a higher risk of complications and death as a result of pregnancy than older women.
Skilled care before, during and after childbirth can save the lives of women and newborn babies.
Between 1990 and 2008, maternal mortality worldwide dropped by one third.
I am leaving today with 3 physicians, 3 nurse practitioners and 2 nurses, our mission is to be a blessing and in God’s help, help just one….one at a time. We will perform surgery, deliver babies, teach, consult, and just listen. Please pray for us to be a blessing to those in Tanzania. I will do my best to keep you updated. We are departing a 4pm today from Kansas City!

Merry Christmas