Friday 10th April 2020

I came to Sri Lanka to take care of my family and with the approach that if there was  an opportunity to use my midwifery knowledge and experience, it would be great. Don’t even ask how many e-mails I sent, offering my help, how many people I talked to about it and how I tried to reach out to someone to use my knowledge.  Here in Sri Lanka, it matters who you know, rather than solely what you know.

Through an Australian lady Jaclyn, a mother of two small children herself and also a mindfulness coach, I managed to address the management of one of the largest maternity hospitals in Colombo in January. They did not warm to my initial proposal for conducting free training for nurses with the title “Empowering staff to empower women”.  I had chosen this subject because to me it really matters and I had received plenty of feedback from women who had received bad experience; they are simply expected to do what the doctor decides, on his terms.  However, when they found out I am a community midwife with experience in water births, they approached me to help get their newly built water birth pool operative on January 7; protocols and instructions for staff had to be developed.

I spent days and nights writing a 21-page guideline for maternity staff that now has to be approved by the medical board and probably by the Sri Lankan Obstetrics Committee.  So many times I went to the maternity hospital and gave practical sessions to the nurses explaining the basics of water birth and actually the fundamentals of midwifery.

I met Kshanika and her husband Mevan in person on Sunday, 5th April in the car on her way to the maternity hospital for her 36 week check-up.  Having first talked to her on the telephone on 12^th March and afterwards sent her links to various information sources, it was nice to meet up and provide some 1:1 parental education.

She seemed pleasant and strong, but I was concerned that I didn’t have enough time to build a trusting relationship with her, this being  critical between a woman and a midwife to achieve positive outcomes.

At 8am on Good Friday 10^th April, the maternity hospital called me to come in as Kshanika was beginning to labour.  I contacted her doctor and he reassured me, that he would be responsible for her care, I would just lead her. It turned out that I was alone with her till 2 pm and the doctor just called periodically asking for an update.  At 2.30pm she stepped in to the pool and at 4.03pm a baby boy was born.  A beautiful birth, everything was without problems and it turned out the best it could.  The mother, husband, staff and especially the doctor were elated.  I was relieved that we didn’t have any complications and when I got home around 6 pm, took a shower and had a well-deserved coffee, for the first time in my life I said to myself, that I must be a good midwife and I should be proud of myself.

We had a lovely Easter weekend, and when the news hit social media on Monday and then the national press soon afterwards, it was a great celebration.  This was especially-so on Facebook when Mevan posted a beautiful message about his strong wife. I was in euphoria for about a week, and actually, I still am, and am probably experiencing the peak of my midwifery career. I recorded a short video about the birth, as did the parents.  I still correspond with Kshanika, supporting her in the immediate postnatal period almost daily, because baby was slow to gain weight.

Huge congratulations to the first baby born in the water in a Sri Lankan maternity hospital; an amazing feeling that cannot be described!

Other mothers are contacting me and asking me to lead them during their labour and not only in the pool birth, so we will see what the future brings before I leave Sri Lanka and return back to the UK at some point in the future.

Rennie