Lately and Some Venting

I've grown remiss once again with the blogging. Sorry about that. I just have more than enough on my plate lately and I'm trying to prioritize accordingly. I still haven't even posted about Thanksgiving! I still plan to share the recipes that worked out so well this year. I will get to that... For now I just have time for a quick update on what's going on lately.

Just yesterday I finally got word that I have permission to take the North American Registry of Midwives exam. Yeah! Today I will submit my written intent with my chosen test site. Once I get confirmation, which is expected by the first week of January, I can then make travel plans. On the intent form there was an additional test sight - Portland, Oregon. I had planned to travel to Eugene but Portland would be even better (closer to Seattle where I'll be driving from) and a really cool city to hang out in. Hopefully enough people sign up to test in Portland. For now I have to wait and see. I've been struggling to find time for studying but with this new development I'm starting to feel like I really must get serious. I've requested to only work one shift per week next month so that will really help.

I'm on call these days for my first home birth. Have I mentioned that? Our pastor's wife is due any day now (she's 39+ weeks) and I'll be assisting at her birth with a midwife friend who used to work at Glory Reborn and now lives in Hong Kong. She is in Cebu just to attend this birth. She delivered this woman's first baby five years ago. I'm really looking forward to it!

Tomorrow I'm teaching the second class in my series on Women's Health to young women and girls recovering from some really tough challenges in their lives. I have learned that most of them have already had a baby and one is pregnant. Tomorrow's topic is the female reproductive system and well-woman care. I continue to be shocked at how little young women know about their bodies in this country.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to pray with an 18-year-old girl who tried to abort her baby (unsuccessfully) after finding she was pregnant. She's in her 3rd year of college and the father is also a student who may or may not even know she's pregnant, as they are no longer in contact. She had absolutely no intention of getting pregnant. So why did she choose to have unprotected sex? Is it because she didn't know? Or did she know but didn't have access to ways to protect herself? I really wonder if she knew that getting pregnant was what happens when you have unprotected sex (among other things!).

Also this week we sent a 19-year-old woman for an ultrasound because the size of her belly did not correlate with how many weeks pregnant she thought she was. As it turned out she wasn't even pregnant. I saw this as an opportunity to discuss whether she had planned this pregnancy and if so, why would wanted a baby. She's single, only reached high school level education, and has no job. When I asked her she said that she wasn't planning to get pregnant but was happy about the idea of having a baby. Why? I asked her. With a childlike grin she shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't know why, she just want to. I noticed on her intake form that she had no history of using any contraceptives. I informed her of what she was exposing herself to every time she had unprotected sex and I'm telling you her face was as if she had never heard that you could get an infection or God-forbid HIV from having unprotected sex, not to mention get pregnant. I encouraged her to not have sex because men tend to use women in this way but if she were going to have sex, at least protect herself!

I also discussed what having a baby would be like. How much is costs and asked her how she would care for a child when she has no job. I told her how hard it is to raise a child without a partner and that God's plan for family is such because it is hard work! Babies need a father and a mother who have work to provide for them in the context of a loving committed marriage relationship. That is God's design and it is that way for a reason. As I shared she started to cry and told me that this guy she had temporarily hooked up with had talked her into having sex and she didn't really want to do it.

After you live in the Philippines and work with pregnant women for a while it becomes clear that men here just don't like to use condoms. Not single men. Not married men. They don't like it and so they refuse to use them. I mean, why would they? It's not their problem if their woman gets pregnant. It's not their problem if the asymptomatic chlamydia they are carrying is spread to god knows how many other women. And besides women will still have sex with them even without a condom so why would they use one?

One of the guards at the clinic the other day was wearing shirt that had a picture of a condom on a yellow traffic yield sign and a big X over it. Below it read, "Protection. What every man is afraid to see."

Back to the 19-year-old.... Trying to hold back my emotions I tried to explain to her how she has a right to make her own choices based on how she wants to live her life and that any guy that will be with her only if she's having sex with him is no guy she should be with!

I entreated her to take care of herself, to protect herself and to make good choices by thinking about consequences. Honestly, I told her, do you really think having a baby is a good idea? She agreed that it was not.

I get so worked up about these things! These young, ignorant girls living in a culture where men seem to have so much power! It's so frustrating because if only the women would step up and exert their own power, men wouldn't be able to take advantage of them as much. This all starts, I believe, with education. Education is power. How can we expect people to make good choices if they don't have information!?

And here is where I may get offensive to anyone who is Catholic or anyone who is against sexual education and information on family planning and contraception. I just get so pissed off that these issues are ignored in an attempt to not give approval to anyone having sex outside of marriage but the fact is EVERYONE IS HAVING SEX ANYWAY!!! Hello! And they are doing it without the knowledge of the consequences and are subsequently not protecting themselves and it is the women especially who suffer here as they are the ones who have to put their lives at risk to keep having babies and who's infections actually potentially damage their reproductive systems and can wreak havoc in their unborn baby's developing body. It is the men who can spread their seeds and infections without any apparent harmful effect. Argh!!!

Another t-shirt I saw on a man in the Philippines sums this up pretty well. It read, "Who are all these kids? And why are they calling me Daddy?"

So what do we end up with? Young, single girls trying to dangerously abort their babies. Unwanted pregnancies. Impoverished children who grow up malnourished and ignorant and uneducated who end up in the same situation as their mothers - young and pregnant. And the cycle of poverty goes on and on and on. I just want to scream!

There is this reproductive health bill in the Philippines that is very controversial and of course, the catholic church staunchly opposes it. Meanwhile the maternal mortality rate is not improving. Rates of STDs and HIV are creeping up and the population is growing very fast. If I remember this correctly, nearly half of the population are urban poor and living on less than $2 a day. Young girls are pressured to provide for their poor, struggling families and end up in sex work and eventually get pregnant. Mothers leave their children to work overseas, desperate for a way to climb out of poverty by being able to afford an education for their children. Broken families. And the entire nation suffers.

Women's Health Education

Last week I had the privilege of teaching women's health to seven young women living in a local aftercare shelter. Most of them are either victims of sexual abuse or commercial sexual exploitation. One of them is pregnant. The director, who is a friend of ours recently asked if I would come and share some nutrition and health information with the girls. I happily said yes.

I really enjoyed prepping for the class. I created a series of three classes on women's health, which include topics ranging from healthy lifestyle choices and nutrition to the female reproductive system to sex, pregnancy, STDs and abortion. I taught the first class last week.

I shared a little bit of my story with them during this first class and honestly, it was amazing how as soon as I started I suddenly had their rapt attention. They even seemed to sit forward in their chairs (there weren't nearly as interested when I was talking about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and the concept of cause and effect). I shared about the lifestyle I was living when I was diagnosed with cancer and how unhealthy I was - emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I was honest about my drug and alcohol use and how broken I was at that time. I shared about being a different person now and how having cancer was part of my "wake up call" which led me on a path to surrender to God's plan for my life and ultimately to healing and wholeness (not that the work is done; of course I still have a ways to go...).

I am saving all the really personal health topics for last. I want them to get to know me a bit and feel a little more comfortable with me before we discuss these things (thus me sharing a bit of my own experience). We're going to talk about the embarrassing and difficult stuff because I'm not sure they are hearing it anywhere else. It is such important information, essential to their well-being. Now motivating them to make the right choices is another thing but without information, how can they even be expected to make good choices?

On a quick side note...You'd be surprised at the level of understanding the women that we work with at the clinic have regarding how their bodies work. These are the women I see who are having more babies than they want, getting infections that they don't know about, and attempting unsafe abortions by ingesting & inserting pills sold to them on the street. (Have you heard of Cytotec? It can be very dangerous. I've heard of women dying from uterine rupture after taking it. Thankfully it appears that much of the stuff found in Cebu are just bunk pills because I have met numerous pregnant women who attempted to abort by taking a very unsafe number of these pills and/or inserting an unsafe number of these pills vaginally but nothing happened. If those pills were real, they would be life-threatening to some, but many times they aren't and so these women end up with an unwanted pregnancy being interviewed at the clinic and usually ridden with guilt and regret over what they did and now very concerned about the health of their baby.)

So after I opened up to these girls, they seemed to be really interested in me and wanted to know what kind of drugs I did, how old I was, etc... They noticed my tattoo and my nose ring and commented on it. I could see their minds turning. Here I am, perhaps in their minds, "a good, Christian girl," not only with a past but willing to share it with them - including the ugly stuff. I am still no expert on Filipino culture but something tells me that this is not common.

I'm really looking forward to spending more time with these precious young women and girls. You can tell some have had it really, really rough and now have a hard shell, which is clear by the tough act they put on. Others are shy and appear to have their childlike innocence intact, which is amazing to me. I haven't been through nearly what these girls have but I hope that by opening up to them about my life, they will find some additional hope for the future in what God will do for them if they seek him.

My hope is that they will come away with the understanding that God has a good plan for their lives and that he cares about our health - spiritual, emotional and physical. In Christ, they can look forward to wholeness, peace and joy, and abundant life. For Jesus indeed has plans to prosper them, not to harm them. Plans to give them a hope and a future.