July 2009
We started to meet some wonderful people in Hyderabad. While we were in Delhi, I met a woman from Australia, who introduced me to Anna Nambiar. Anna and her husband, Pav, are the staples of the young Hyderabad ex-pat community. They have been in India for 4 years and had a child here. So she knows almost anything a new person needs to know about Hyderabad. She is in contact with so many people who are pregnant, getting pregnant, have young children and new midwives☺ She introduced us to Rebecca and Justin from the US, who were having their first baby. Justin is a pilot for Jet Airways. So he and Mike became great friends! Rebecca is an artist and did some paintings for us. It was great to meet some new people and have some friends.

July brought more challenges at work. I was told when I started that I could conduct deliveries. Until now, I was trying to get to know the system and understand the way birth was done in India. I have to say birth in India is VERY medicalized. The Friedman curve rules. Women are put on the curve before they are even in real labor. The doctors and nurses are all terrified of birth. They come in everyday expecting all the moms and babies to die, it seems. So they do every medical intervention possible so that the baby is safe. Safe meaning the mom has pitocin, an epidural and most likely an instrument delivery, the baby then is whisked away to the nursery where a doctor does a thorough exam and the baby is not given back to the mom for about 1 hour. The family is shown the baby almost immediately so they can see if it is a girl or a boy. I worked really hard on starting to get the babies back to the mom within the first hour to start breast-feeding. It was a challenge but the head neonatologist really wanted this to be done but to get the nurses to bring the babies to the mom was difficult. At a hospital with 450 deliveries a month it can be difficult. I would try to help the nurses realize that if the mom and attendant (usually mother or mother-in-law) was taking care of the baby the nurse would have less work to do. I finally just made it my duty after every baby was born I would ask the doctor if the baby was ok and if it was I would take it to breast feed. The moms would sometimes say they were too tired but after explaining that the first hour after birth was so important to breastfeeding they would often try right away. I did this for about 2 weeks before a nurse, who was very resistant at first saw me help a third time mom with breast-feeding (by help I mean give the baby to the mom, as a third time mom can teach us how to do it) and the mom just put the baby right to breast. The nurse said, “I have never seen the mom do that without help. I am scared to help with this because I have never done it before so don’t know how to help.” I had done a lot of conferences for the nurses on how to help with breast-feeding, how to help with laboring women and pain and about the art of caring. I realized that a lot of what I said in classes was either not being understood due to language barrier or the nurses being exhausted after shifts. So I started taking one nurse at a time with me when I helped women with breast-feeding so that they could see how I did it and then maybe feel more comfortable. I think it did help but there were still nurses that were resistant.

Mike continued to work with Turbo Aviation. Finally, Mike had been able to have more time off. We started to have more of a life and had more people to hang out with. We got a driver, Saleem and a cool Ambassador! It is a really cool old car. Saleem is the best! The first day of work, he came upstairs and I was saying that all of our light switches don’t work or turn on a light/fan all the way on the other side of the room. He says “Ma’am, I am a small electrician. I will fix it.” And fix it he did. He got all off our switches working correctly. It was so great to have someone helping us. He also speaks 5 languages so can get around anywhere in Hyderabad and find everything that we need. We should have hired him 6 months earlier! So July was the month we finally settled into life in Hyderabad.


Indian style photography

Me and my new friends

Mary-Signe and Saleem at Golconda Fort

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