In 1951 Grand Midwife Maude
Callen’s work as a midwife serving the rural population in South Carolina was
photographed and published in Life magazine by Eugene Smith. Because of the article, readers donated
20,000, and she was able to open the Maude E. Callen clinic in 1953.
After getting halfway through one evenings letters in response to the photo essay, Maude told her husband;
" I'm too tired and happy to read any more tonight. I just want to sit here and be thankful"
Maude served her community for 70 years. She cared. She waded through mud and traveled miles. She saved lives. Eugene Smith's photo essay is a brilliant tribute to Maude's compassion and strength. The photos speak for themselves.
Washing up by lamplight
"Angel at Twilight" South Carolina Hall of Fame spotlight video
Maude dropping off new dresses
"I’ve seen people in need so much, and so much to be done, I decided
then myself I was going to make some effort in order to help them to live a
better life”
Maude served about a 400 square mile area. Much of it was mud and water, and this scene is typical of what she would go through to help someone in need at their own home. I love her bare feet!
making pads out of newspaper for a birth
Maude was one of 13 sisters and was orphaned at 6. She was raised by her uncle, who was the first black doctor in Tallahassee. She became a nurse at 21 and in 1922 she studied nurse midwifery at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
Robin Lim, known as Mother Robin, was the 2001 CNN hero of the year for her non-profit birth center in Bali, and her work with tsunami ravaged Aceh, which led to the construction of a second birth center in that location. Mother Robin has trained many to facilitate safe labor and birth in areas ravaged by natural disaster like Haiti.
Over the past 13 years, Yayasan Bumi Sehat (Healthy Mother Earth Foundation) has helped thousands of mothers and babies to receive adequate care, saving many lives in a country where maternal mortality rates are 31 times higher than in the US, and infant mortality rates are 5 times the US average. What this means is that of every 1000 babies born, 31 will die. And 373 women out of every 1000 will die due to childbirth related complications
Robin married William Hemmerle and together they raised 8 children. She became a midwife after several personal tragedies, including her sister dying from preventable complications during pregnancy, igniting within her a passion for caring for mothers who "slip though the cracks" of modern women's health care. Mother Robin and William left their home in Hawaii to move to Bali where she volunteered as home birth midwife. When her services became more widely sought out, Robin obtained her CPM credential from the North American Registry of Midwives
Mother Robin is committed to bringing peace to the world by doing more than her part to ensure each child is born in peace.
"We live in times of trauma. And yet I believe its the little ideas and solutions that we come up with ourselves, from our hearts and that we share with our communities that are going to make our world a safer place. Bhumi Sehat is a really small NGO, yet we have demonstrated a model of care that is effective, inexpensive, and sustainable. We're really proud of it. I believe that culturally appropriate woman to woman care, the midwifery model of care, is really going to address those issues of saving infants lives, and mothers lives. I believe that our solution, which is community based, is much more effective than projects that threw billions of dollars at childbirth technology. If you want to help mothers and babies to survive, support midwives. They are the guardians of childbirth."
For more information, and to support the work of Robin Lim, and so many other at Yayasan Bumi Sehat, click Here
My first tribute to midwife heros celebrates Mormon pioneer Patty Sessions.
"We bade our children and friends good bye and started for the west. I knitted almost a mitten for Mr Sessions while he went back to get some things we left".
Patty was born
in maine in 1795 and married David Sessions in 1812. They were farmers, and they had 8 children together.
She delivered
her first baby around 1812, by accident (she was an assistant to her
mother in law), and was told by the obstetrician who arrived later that she was a natural and
would be successful if she “continued in the business”
She was baptized along with her husband in 1834, when she was 26. She was called to go with the original mormon pioneer company heading West and arrived in SLC in 1947 when she was 52.
Her
journals are accurate and important historical records for the young church.She kept them meticulously every day
for 20 years, and recorded almost 4000 births, 248 of these were within
the first year she lived in SLC.
On top of that, every
day of her life was filled with hard work and service to others. Her entries were full of trips to attend women at all hours, bringing food to sick neighbors, knitting, planting, harvesting, and visiting.
An excerpt from Patty's journal shows some her remedies, and the range of illnesses she was called on to treat, as well as her midwifery duties.
salve for old sores: Bark of indigo weed
boiled down, beeswax, mutton tallow, and a very little rosin
Jaundice: Take one tablespoon
of castile soap shavings, mixed with sugar, for three mornings, then miss three
and continue until it has been taken 9 days, a sure cure
Bowel Complaint: take one teaspoonful
rhubarb, one fourth carbonate
of soda, one tablespoon brandy, one teaspoon peppermint essence,half teacupful warm water, take
tablespoonful once an hour until it operates
Vomiting: 6 drops laudanum,
the size of a pea of soda, two teaspoons peppermint essence, 4 cups of water;
take a tablespoonful at a time until it stops.If the first does don’t repeat it
Heartburn:
laudanum, carbonate
soda, ammonia, sweet oil, camphor. Also for milk leg infection and
sweating
