Personal birthing experience: My birth.
30 years ago my mother gave me life, she had gone to her parents rural home to attend her uncle's burial when it happened. She was a few months away from giving birth, so she was not worried at all since the doctor had adviced her that all was fine and she could travel. Immediately after the burial, she went into premature labour and one hour later she delivered a by girl (me of course :-) ) in her parents house by the help of a traditional midwife. In most rural parts of kenya, hospitals are many hours away and without a reliable mode of transport, women opt for home births by the help of traditional midwifes for fear that they may not make it in time to the hospital and will be forced to have a baby by the road side. Two hours later my mother and I were taken to the hospital and put on admission by the doctor. Two weeks later we were discharged and my mother went home. According to our traditions when a woman gives birth, her mother is supposed to go stay with her to take care of the mother and the baby. Especially for first time mothers your mother trains you for the one month she is with you on how to take care of the baby, how to clean him/her and how to take care of yourself as a nursing mother. Here I am very healthy and proud of my mother, she is a hero and so are all mothers.
I choose this example because I am not a mother yet and i have not taken part in a birth of a child so it was easy to narrate mine.
How births happen in Kenya.
As a kenyan I have some knowledge on two different types of birth, the controlled / clinical setting and home births. The controlled/clinical setting births are very common in the urban part of kenya, whereby we have so may hospitals, medical centers and dispensaries. Most families opt for hospital births for the safety of the mother and the baby. There are two types of hospitals, the government owned hospitals and private hospitals. The government owned hospitals are affordable for most lower and middle class and the private hospitals are expensive and can only be accessed by some of the middle class and upper class. Family members are allowed in the ward during delivery of the baby so long as it is natural birth but if it is C-Section the family is required to stay at the waiting area. Very few people in the urban areas opt for home births.
In most rural areas in kenya hospitals have been bult both government and private and majority of people in the rural areas opt for home births. Also a big part of rural areas in Kenya have very few hospitals and they are very far away or not well equiped. Here are some of the reasons people in rural areas consider home births.
1. Distance to the health facilities.
Although health sector infrastructure has grown over the past decade, many women in rural areas still live a long way from health facilities. Access to skilled delivery is a particular challenge .
2. Transport to hospital too expensive.
At the moment women rely on their husbands selling one of his livestock to raise the money to travel to hospital (6,000 shillings — just over £40 — for a one-way car journey from Sitoka village to Kilgoris hospital), over which they have no control. On June 1, 2013, the Government of Kenya launched a policy of free maternity services in all public facilities. However, this may not have as big an impact as the government hopes. Of women who delivered outside a health facility, 42 per cent said it was because the facility was too far away or there was no transport to the facility, compared to 17 per cent who said the cost of delivery was the problem.
3. Poorly equiped and uncomfortable facilities.
Kenya’s public health facilities are plagued by reports of abuse, mistreatment, and negligence of patients, made worse by poor supervision and understaffing. Health workers are also frequently insufficiently trained.
There similarities in my birth and some of the birth experience happening in rural Kenya today. The reason I was birthed at home was because the hospital was too far and there was no reliable mode of transport just like the other people in rural homes.
There are differences between my home birth and the clinical births that are happening in borth urban and rural kenya. In the clinical there are doctors and nurse but in my situation there was no doctor or trained midwife. In hospitals birth areas are sterilised but in home births there is no sterilzation done and there is a risk of the child contracting multiple diseases.
References
https://medium.com/@caglobal/seven-reasons-why-women-dont-deliver-in-hospitals-in-kenya-d643df4a5359
