Brutal Births for Asylum Seekers

Yes, as if it wasn't bad enough leaving Mosul, Aleppo, Damascus or any other not so well-known  place where war killed thousands and maimed more (have a peek here to get a sense of the immensity of the crisis), yes if that wasn't bad enough, if it wasn't bad enough to flee - to have to flee, leaving a normal life - the kind of life you and I lead - with phones and laptops and going out to eat and new clothes and a job and a house and cool stuff and a country you love or you love to complain about -if it wasn't bad enough to run through a country you didn't recognize, and maybe get caught by the police, or maybe your brother gets caught and he throws you his child - and you keep running - and then if it wasn't bad enough to have to live in a tent, when you're pregnant and having to pee all the time, and your sister is in Turkey and you are worried about her, and its your first baby and you don't know anything about having a baby because you were studying finance in University before all this shit started - and if it wasn't bad enough to get a call at midnight from the UNHCR telling you to pack your stuff because you're being relocated tomorrow, so any friends you had you can only communicate by Whats App because no one can get around much - and if it wasn't bad enough that you packed all your stuff in one nylon bag, and your belly is hurting and you don't know why, and you are moved to a hotel past the airport, and there is an abusive helper man there but you can't tell anyone, and if it wasn't bad enough to be living in a hotel, with no chance to cook so you want to be back living in a tent in a warehouse ....

Then you may be in labor but you don't really know - and who has ever been pregnant for the first time knows how this feels - and of course we get calls all the time when people think they're in labor and they just need some love and reassurance and they usually go back to sleep, unless they really are in labor in which case we go to be with them.

But in any case, there's no one to call, and you're frightened for the baby, so you call an ambulance. And indeed you're not in labor, but its kind of around your due date, and your baby's big according to the ultrasound, so you have a c-section. Alone, because husbands aren't allowed in, and because you don't have a doula, and because just because. Your life just gets more and more painful, and the blood is awful, and the people speaking Greek to you, loudly so you understand, but you don’t understand anything – not why you had to leave, why you are running, why you can’t just go to Switzerland where your brother is, why you are having your baby cut out of you instead of how normal people have their babies … it is awful, and you think about your friend a few years ago, she had a baby. She had it in the hospital, back home in Syria, she said it was painful but nothing you couldn’t do with just a little encouragement. Her older sister went with her, and she had a nice doctor.

Cesarean section rates are ridiculously high in Greece, much higher than the recommended 15% that the WHO suggests is a rate that both protects mothers and babies, and higher than the rate was in Syria before the war (see Syrian c-section rates here). Our average in Canada is around 25%. That’s one in four babies born – but those figures vary widely across the country and across socio-economic lines. More wealthy and educated people in Canada are now working hard to have a vaginal birth, and of course the possibility of midwifery care greatly increases your chance of having your baby vaginally. My private doula clients have generally had rates of c-section varying from 6 to 15 %. The volunteer doula program I led for many years served marginalized families in Montreal, and our c-section rates were high – up to 35%. I am extrapolating from my figures and from what I heard from the mothers I met, and I suggest that from a Greek 60% it may go up to closer to 90% for asylum seekers, in a rural hospital next to a refugee camp.

If you are an asylum seeker in Greece, you are at the mercy of spotty health care, and that care is embedded in a system that doesn’t work! The medical NGOs are doing their best - Medecins du Monde, Medecins Sans Frontiers, SAM, Rowing Together ... but prenatal care is patchy. And there isn't the kind of continuity that always makes a difference. Frequent ultrasounds are the norm, instead of quality week-by-week prenatal care. Logistically, it’s easier to plan an induction or a c-section than to have a laboring woman transferred by … by what? Taxi? Ambulance? Someone’s private car?  … at 3 in the morning if she goes into labor and has been relocated to the back of beyond? So she gets the call from her doctor, or a doctor who comes to the hotel or the camp, and off she goes.

The word is, that doulas aren’t allowed in the hospitals, but I don’t believe it. I believe a friendly, smiling face accompanying a laboring mother will be welcomed by the hospital, especially if that mother starts screaming the doula’s name when she is separated (sorry, yes, I have done this). I want to change things around for these mothers, and provide them with caring companions who will be with them through thick and thin. Even if they don’t get to go into the labor room, even if a mother does end up having a surgical birth, a smiling face at the end of that tunnel is a life-changer.

I’m not big on bureaucracy, protocols, rules. I believe kindness, unconditional love, and a little who-gives-a-shit attitude can go a long way. I am determined to change some peoples’ lives for the better, starting with their birth day.

Who’s with me? Please let me know if you would like to be part of my dream: leave me a comment and I will reply as soon as I can, or join my group on Facebook: Birth Companions International.

Day by Day

"So what are you actually DOING over there? It's amazing you're there, but..."

A valid question. Some days I feel I am not doing anything at all. One of the first days I was here, my glasses broke (actually snapped!) and I haven't been able to replace them here, so I am feeling a little self-conscious.

What am I actually doing here in northern Greece, supposedly volunteering with refugees? First of all, most of the people moving through Greece in the hope of finding a country that will accept them are not official "refugees", but rather "asylum seekers".  This term seems even more precarious to me, and pretty much appears to be someone who has very few of the rights we take for granted.

I live in a small apartment with nine other women. Actually, eleven. Or is it ten? The numbers change all the time. Most of us are volunteers, but some of us are coordinating this huge venture we are involved in.

In the evening, we make bags of supplies for the mothers we are seeing the following day. Food, diapers, and newborn packs for the very pregnant mothers.

In the morning, we leave the apartment and go to visit mothers - either pregnant women, breastfeeding, or both, or women with children under two. Our mandate is to be sure that mothers are effectively feeding their babies. That's the simple story.

What's the rest of the story? What am I doing? I am providing prenatal care, sometimes. I'm weighing babies. I'm giving breastfeeding information and support. I'm looking at various people's ailments. I drive a lot.

I drive a lot because the people that were located in the camps have been relocated by the UNHCR to hotels and apartment buildings all over Greece. The motive was great: it has been very cold here and people were freezing.

Lovely olive tress, but if you were a city person, from a beautiful big old city like Damascus or Aleppo, how would you want to be relocated to a hotel here in the middle of nowhere, away from any community that you had formerly created in the camp - even though the camp is horrible - and possibly away from the people in your family? It's such a difficult situation - and every single person involved is doing the very best they can possibly do. I went to a building today where some families had been settled. A few days ago, it was a mud pool. Today, there were walkways set up with scaffolding, and a gravel road was being put down.

I spend some of my time in camps. These are housed in abandoned warehouses, with rows and rows of tents inside them. Heating, electricity and wifi are provided. Many dedicated volunteers help to provide health care, activities for the children, food, clothing and support for the people living there.

There are two interesting housing projects I have visited. One of them has been made real by a group of people from the UK, who have bought an apartment complex and created a space for families to live. They have named their project "Filoxenia", which means "generosity of spirit". This is a new project and is constantly changing and growing, which houses mostly young families and their children.

The least depressing place I have visited is called "Elpida". This is an abandoned factory that was bought by two philanthropists from North America (an American and a Canadian). It has been rebuilt to house families, and many volunteers help to create community by providing health care, education, activities, communal spaces and a place to belong.

http://togetherforbetterdays.org/elpida/
http://radcliffefoundation.org/project/elpida-home/
https://www.facebook.com/elpidafactory/

But let's remember that all of these great initiatives are just band-aid measures, and the real answers lie with the governments that need to decide what to do about this huge crisis. Every single person I have met, from the lovely young woman who bathes babies to the very young mother living in a hotel with her tiny baby, to the important military-looking people at the camps, they are all doing their best. Tomorrow, I'll be going to a camp and then visiting a pregnant mother who has been relocated to a beautiful apartment she shares with ten other people, who told me that she will be moved again within the month.

I hope I can make a little difference to someone.