Just a day to the World Midwives Day, a Kibera lady, Linnet Atieno, says she will by all means spend her day with Wanjiru, a slum midwife who facilitated the delivery of her first born daughter just at her home within the slums.
Atieno says that she could have died if it were not for Wanjiru, a 56-year old midwife based in Kisumu Ndogo.
As she leads us to the challenges encountered while giving birth, Wanjiru notes that the day of a child's birth is a day filled with visible joy but for many women, the day comes with fear and uncertainty. For the unfortunate, it can be a day of tragedy.
Wanjiru recounts the day Atieno came to her and laboured for close to 72 hours at the informal settlements of Kibera. She was experiencing heavy bleeding but opted to stay with her because she never had means of transport to get to the nearest health centre. The midwife happily notes that her client finally delivered her daughter safely. Both the baby girl and the mother had no complications. However, she notes that midwifery is not such an easy task. Sometimes, deliveries come with complications but to address this, she has contacts to nearby emergency services within the city. She says that she has even undergone training on hygiene at government hospitals where she is given gloves to handle her patients. She recounts the incident where she was forced to seek emergency from Kenyatta National Hospital back in 2010, where the mother had an unusually big baby and the only way to avert possible danger was to undergo a CS that could only be done in a hospital theatre. Fortunately, it turned out successful.
Her advice to mothers is to make frequent visits to formal hospitals for check-ups and deliveries. If it comes as an emergency, she says, local midwives can become handy and get into action.