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Passion for poor mothers
Passion for poor mothers
Shiphrah Birthing Home labors for welfare of women, children
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTOS
ANTIPOLO, Philippines—Certain emblems carry the essence of a person’s work—a surgeon’s scalpel, a writer’s pen.
For workers at Shiphrah Birthing Home, a ministry to poor mothers in Metro Manila, it’s a birthing stool.
The stool, like Shiphrah’s ministry, is effective in its simplicity. Designed by Shiphrah founders Dennis and Jeri Gunderson, it is a horseshoe-shaped seat with thick legs that stands just a few inches high. Jeri explains that sitting on the stool helps open the laboring woman’s pelvis and allows her to use body position and gravity to her own advantage.
“She does not lie down like a dead cockroach,” Gunderson, 61, says with not a little scorn toward Western medical norms. “She sits up like a real person.
“Our passion is that these women be affirmed in their womanhood and motherhood [see Sidebar],” she says. “They are loved by God. They and their children are unique creations by God and have eternal worth and value.”
Treating with Dignity
Which is exactly what poor pregnant women don’t get treated like in most local hospitals, Jeri says. She cites “hideous overcrowding” and chronic shortness of staff and supplies as just a few reasons not to go. Another is lack of money—almost no one Shiphrah cares for has the 2,000 pesos ($40) it takes to get seen or heard in the crowd.
A Shiphrah midwife once had to take an expectant mother suffering from low hemoglobin to three hospitals before one accepted her.
“The last thing you want to do is send them to a hospital,” says Jeri, who lets her five midwives do most of the day-to-day work. However, if the mother is having twins (or triplets) or the baby is breach, Shiphrah is legally required to take her to a hospital.
The ministry has lost “darn few” babies in its 18 years, Jeri says. She stopped counting the successful ones a long time ago.
Shiphrah House is named for the Jewish midwife in Exodus Chapter 1 who was ordered by Pharaoh to kill all baby boys born to the Jewish families in Egypt. Shiphrah and the other midwives refused Pharaoh’s order and let the boys live. Likewise, the Gundersons’ vision is to help their clients and their clients’ children live better lives than the ones poverty or social pressures might otherwise assign them.
“Women are required to be the responsible ones, especially in this society,” Jeri says. She illustrates with a common site in Metro Manila—little boys playing in the street while their sisters do laundry, prepare food and clean house alongside their mothers. “The poorest of the poor and the most marginalized in any society are the women.
“If the woman is cared for, the family will be cared for.”
Shiphrah midwives use a handheld Doppler device and a stethoscope to monitor babies’ health, but that is the extent of the modern equipment. Jeri says the goal is to give women a simple plan for giving birth that they can take with them if they can’t come back.
“This whole ministry is reproducible,” Jeri says. “There’s no fancy equipment. You don’t need an ultrasound and all this stuff to deliver a baby.”
The idea is to offer strong moral support and help women relax so they can rely on the body’s God-given chemistry, says Jeri, a mother of six. She remembers mothers at Shiphrah who have even fallen asleep between contractions, no drugs administered.
“Birth is 99 percent about what is going on in the mind,” Jeri says. “That controls the release of the hormones that control the birthing process. If they’re scared or angry, their cervix is not going to open up. We have seen mothers here, their endorphin system is working so well they rock like they’ve been shot up with something.”
Nutrition = Fighting Chance
Shiphrah requires its clients to attend nine prenatal education classes before they give birth there. Women learn about family planning, the birthing process itself and the importance of nutrition, especially eating enough during pregnancy and breastfeeding children until they are a year old.
A prevailing Filipino myth is that a woman should curb her eating during pregnancy lest her child grow too large to deliver safely. The practice is enforced by many a mother-in-law and even propagated by doctors, Jeri says. “It’s one of the most harmful [issues] we have to deal with,” she says.
If that weren’t bad enough, most women have to work and often choose to stop breastfeeding early, instead opting for cheap milk substitutes that they thin out for lack of money. The malnutrition stunts the children physically and mentally.
“You’ve doomed the kid to a substandard IQ,” Jeri says with characteristic bluntness. “You’re talking about the difference between someone who thinks lethargically and non-creatively and someone who’s firing on all eight cylinders.”
By the time women finish the nine-week course—Jeri cheers as she hands them their graduation certificates—they know how the birth process works and how it should work. “Here they are all prepared technically—they know what to do,” Jeri says. “If you graduate from this, you don’t have to come back, but some do anyway.”
Rowena Ibanez, 37, says she has gotten a lot of out of the classes. She gave birth to her first child here 12 years ago. Pregnant with her second child, she says she came back to Shiphrah because it is the best place she knows to have a baby.
“I don’t like hospitals,” Rowena says. “I like it here. They make you feel more comfortable here. In the hospital, they don’t comfort you.”
Rowena is even considering getting trained as a midwife, having helped deliver a friend’s baby in the past. “I really like it. I like to see newborn babies,” she says. “I’m not afraid.”
Score one more for the program in its fight to re-educate Filipino culture about the birth process, one woman at a time. It starts with a midwife kneeling at the birthing stool, caring for her client at one of the most critical moments there is.
“When I say we serve at their feet, I’m not kidding,” Jeri says.
Shiphrah Birthing Home labors for welfare of women, children
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Dennis and Jeri Gunderson demonstrate the typical scene of a laboring mother on a birthing stool with a support partner, most often a husband, behind her.
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ANTIPOLO, Philippines—Certain emblems carry the essence of a person’s work—a surgeon’s scalpel, a writer’s pen.
For workers at Shiphrah Birthing Home, a ministry to poor mothers in Metro Manila, it’s a birthing stool.
The stool, like Shiphrah’s ministry, is effective in its simplicity. Designed by Shiphrah founders Dennis and Jeri Gunderson, it is a horseshoe-shaped seat with thick legs that stands just a few inches high. Jeri explains that sitting on the stool helps open the laboring woman’s pelvis and allows her to use body position and gravity to her own advantage.
“She does not lie down like a dead cockroach,” Gunderson, 61, says with not a little scorn toward Western medical norms. “She sits up like a real person.
“Our passion is that these women be affirmed in their womanhood and motherhood [see Sidebar],” she says. “They are loved by God. They and their children are unique creations by God and have eternal worth and value.”
Treating with Dignity
Which is exactly what poor pregnant women don’t get treated like in most local hospitals, Jeri says. She cites “hideous overcrowding” and chronic shortness of staff and supplies as just a few reasons not to go. Another is lack of money—almost no one Shiphrah cares for has the 2,000 pesos ($40) it takes to get seen or heard in the crowd.
A Shiphrah midwife once had to take an expectant mother suffering from low hemoglobin to three hospitals before one accepted her.
“The last thing you want to do is send them to a hospital,” says Jeri, who lets her five midwives do most of the day-to-day work. However, if the mother is having twins (or triplets) or the baby is breach, Shiphrah is legally required to take her to a hospital.
The ministry has lost “darn few” babies in its 18 years, Jeri says. She stopped counting the successful ones a long time ago.
Shiphrah House is named for the Jewish midwife in Exodus Chapter 1 who was ordered by Pharaoh to kill all baby boys born to the Jewish families in Egypt. Shiphrah and the other midwives refused Pharaoh’s order and let the boys live. Likewise, the Gundersons’ vision is to help their clients and their clients’ children live better lives than the ones poverty or social pressures might otherwise assign them.
“Women are required to be the responsible ones, especially in this society,” Jeri says. She illustrates with a common site in Metro Manila—little boys playing in the street while their sisters do laundry, prepare food and clean house alongside their mothers. “The poorest of the poor and the most marginalized in any society are the women.
“If the woman is cared for, the family will be cared for.”
Shiphrah midwives use a handheld Doppler device and a stethoscope to monitor babies’ health, but that is the extent of the modern equipment. Jeri says the goal is to give women a simple plan for giving birth that they can take with them if they can’t come back.
“This whole ministry is reproducible,” Jeri says. “There’s no fancy equipment. You don’t need an ultrasound and all this stuff to deliver a baby.”
The idea is to offer strong moral support and help women relax so they can rely on the body’s God-given chemistry, says Jeri, a mother of six. She remembers mothers at Shiphrah who have even fallen asleep between contractions, no drugs administered.
“Birth is 99 percent about what is going on in the mind,” Jeri says. “That controls the release of the hormones that control the birthing process. If they’re scared or angry, their cervix is not going to open up. We have seen mothers here, their endorphin system is working so well they rock like they’ve been shot up with something.”
Nutrition = Fighting Chance
Shiphrah requires its clients to attend nine prenatal education classes before they give birth there. Women learn about family planning, the birthing process itself and the importance of nutrition, especially eating enough during pregnancy and breastfeeding children until they are a year old.
A prevailing Filipino myth is that a woman should curb her eating during pregnancy lest her child grow too large to deliver safely. The practice is enforced by many a mother-in-law and even propagated by doctors, Jeri says. “It’s one of the most harmful [issues] we have to deal with,” she says.
If that weren’t bad enough, most women have to work and often choose to stop breastfeeding early, instead opting for cheap milk substitutes that they thin out for lack of money. The malnutrition stunts the children physically and mentally.
“You’ve doomed the kid to a substandard IQ,” Jeri says with characteristic bluntness. “You’re talking about the difference between someone who thinks lethargically and non-creatively and someone who’s firing on all eight cylinders.”
By the time women finish the nine-week course—Jeri cheers as she hands them their graduation certificates—they know how the birth process works and how it should work. “Here they are all prepared technically—they know what to do,” Jeri says. “If you graduate from this, you don’t have to come back, but some do anyway.”
Rowena Ibanez, 37, says she has gotten a lot of out of the classes. She gave birth to her first child here 12 years ago. Pregnant with her second child, she says she came back to Shiphrah because it is the best place she knows to have a baby.
“I don’t like hospitals,” Rowena says. “I like it here. They make you feel more comfortable here. In the hospital, they don’t comfort you.”
Rowena is even considering getting trained as a midwife, having helped deliver a friend’s baby in the past. “I really like it. I like to see newborn babies,” she says. “I’m not afraid.”
Score one more for the program in its fight to re-educate Filipino culture about the birth process, one woman at a time. It starts with a midwife kneeling at the birthing stool, caring for her client at one of the most critical moments there is.
“When I say we serve at their feet, I’m not kidding,” Jeri says.
© 2007 Called and Sent Magazine. All international rights reserved.