Art 38. The beginning of all life

With the birth of her first child, the treatment at the hospital was terrible and Martha decided to have her other children at home. Her first birth attended as a midwife was that of her younger sister. Martha fondly remembers her mother’s advice, from midwife to midwife: “you have to be calm to transmit tranquility to the mother…. I fell in love with my first attended birth. I am passionate about what I do. The most important thing is the emotional part, which the mother is calm and feels good as the protagonist (and not the midwife or the nurse or the doctor)”.

She mentions that the ancestral midwives are used to provide help that the obstetrician, nurse or gynecologist do not do: help the baby to enter the position to be born, in the postpartum reposition the uterus with massages, and tightening with sheets since it is important that the mother can make her life afterwards, call the baby’s spirit and perform the first rite that is called maitu: a bath with rosemary and roses, to then bundle the baby. All plants are allies of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum, Martha explains: rosemary, nettle, dog barley, dandelion, fig leaves and others; and flowers, for postpartum baths. “Medicinal plants are my sisters.” When asked if there is a dialogue of knowledge between ancestral and western midwifery, Martha says: “There are western practices that we have incorporated such as the use of gloves, scissors, Doppler to listen to the baby’s heart, sanitary towels; but the positions, exercises, baths, postpartum care and accompaniment have been incorporated by the west in their concept of humanized childbirth. Our organizations have finally achieved that in the hospital of Cotacachi there is also a room for ancestral childbirth and free position for the parturient. The hospital protocols generate nervousness in many women; in addition, mestizo women are treated better in the hospital than indigenous women”. Martha has been attending births for more than 15 years and admits that things have changed, but there is still a long way to go. “Midwives can now attend births in a hospital even though it depends on the nurse or obstetrician on duty. There are cases where they tell you: ‘Marthita, if you need help, call us,’ but there are other cases where they barely allow you to accompany the mother. I think it should not depend on the nurse but should be defined as an institutional policy. Every mother looks for a place where she feels at ease to give birth; the hospital is not necessarily this place: because of the very strong lights, the risk that the procedure and protocol of western medicine generates stress and even guilt in the woman: … doctor, am I doing wrong? At home, the protagonist is the mother, in the hospital it is the doctor; it is a disempowerment of the person, also in childbirth; the mother loses control over her process”.