Day 3 Training of Trainers

Today in our third day of training, we tackled "challenging childbirths," which can include long labors, poor coping, complications, cesarean births, stillbirths/expected loss, or working with survivors of physical/sexual assault.  Our conversations were serious and focused, with everyone showing a real commitment to learning how to best support these patients. Women in these situations can benefit greatly from the support measures we have been practicing all week.  We then discussed how to best support family members or friends to make them "part of the labor team."  A helpful family member can make the health workers job much easier by making women feel more comfortable, and even assisting with physical comfort measures at the health worker's suggestion.  The final item on our agenda was was to discuss Trained Traditional Midwives (TTM), women who care for laboring patients in the rural communities.  One of the goals of this program is to foster positive relationships with these women and to clearly define the roles that they may play should they choose to accompany their patients to the health facility.  Together we have started developing an agenda for our meeting with 20 TTMs on Friday, and we hope that they will carry news of this program back to their communities, therefore helping mitigate the perception that the health center can be an unsupportive environment.