A SUCCESS!

hello my dear friends and family,
this update is coming rather late in the game, but alas i have had my hands quite full the past 6 weeks. Not only that, but contact with high speed internet to upload photos has been scarce.

I am happy to report to all of you that my 6 weeks in Indonesia were an amazing experience.
I was successful in getting 120 lbs (yes that's right 120 lbs!!!!!) of medical supplies past customs (although indeed, we did have to pay some one off at the airport to help get the supplies through.)
I can not even begin to put into words the kind of emotions I felt attending births where the supplies being used were things that my friends and family graciously donated and helped me get to these families. I deeply felt a sense of pride that I will carry with me for a very long time.
I was also successful in attending some wonderful births and learning a great deal from them. And more importantly I was successful in having an amazing personal journey. I turned 28 while I was away and had the BEST birthday celebration of my life!!!

To be honest its sort of difficult to explain the last 6 weeks in a succinct way. Because of this, I've decided to approach this update with a very basic run down of things and then i am going to post photos and captions below - these photos and captions will share a story.

And as for the parts of my trip that are left out after that...they are difficult to put into words and not exactly material for a public forum. My journey back to the Bumi Sehat clinic this year was as much of an inner journey as it was an outer one. For those challenges and blessings I am eternally grateful.
The trip itself in no way shape or form resembled what I thought it would be like, nor what I wanted it to be like...but it was amazing nonetheless. I am grateful I was given the opportunity to learn a great deal during these last 6 weeks, not just about birth, but about myself and about some of the people that were in my life.

I am also so GRATEFUL that I got to see more of the country this time. I got to meet more local people. I was given the opportunity see different parts of the culture and to see the countryside in a way i did not get to in 2005. This time I was invited to special ceremonies, spent weekends with locals and got to see what their every day life is like. I got to partake in many o many ceremonies (the Balinese have a ceremony for every hour of every day!!!! literally, this is no exaggeration!) In general, this trip was so wonderfully and dramatically different for me than what my time there in 2005 was like.
So yes, its been quite a success. YEAH!!!!!



ok, SOOO now on to logistics.

So i arrived in Indonesia on Jan. 14th to the island of Bali. I was thinking I might try to get myself to the Bumi Sehat sister clinic in Aceh, Sumatra, but I wasn't sure. In the end I spent my entire 6 weeks in Bali. It was a lot of fun being back at the Bali clinic - especially my first few days...many people hardly recognized me as I now have hair! :) When I was at the clinic in 2005 I was sporting a freshly shaved head...so most people didn't know what to do with themselves seeing me this time around.


With the help of many of you reading this, I was able to bring 120 lbs of medical supplies to the Bumi Sehat clinic- the supplies ranged from receiving blankets, nursing bras, dopplers to hear a baby's heart beat, medical gloves, ointments, chinese herbs, to prenatal vitamins. I was also able to buy them a much needed white board so that the midwives and volunteers could track the patients at the clinic and their on going status', AND i was able to buy the clinic two very fancy new medical lamps to be used for stitching (prior to this the clinic had no white board, so no organized way of tracking patient's progress AND the clinic only had one medical lamp which worked half the time and in order to even get the damn thing to work you had to jiggle the chord and sometimes it would go out in the middle of a sewing AND it got very hot. so imagine its 95 degrees outside and you are in an open air room, no fan, and no air conditioner. you can imagine it gets pretty hot already right?! and then add the heat of a lamp on top of that and you get my point...needless to say it was a pain! the new medical lamps are non heating ones and a fancier build. so yeah!!!!) ANDDDDD I was able to give $100 to the family of the twins who were born in Aceh. $100 USD is the equivalent of several months salary for that family. (And for those of you who might not know this, this particular family was the family whose birth changed my life. I attended the birth of their twins while volunteering at the Bumi Sehat clinic in Aceh in 2005.)
So all in all it was quite a successful mission!!!!!!!!!!


I stayed at a house across the street from the clinic. In the house were the various other volunteers - amazing, amazing, amazing women whom I could go on and on and on about their brilliance for HOURS. The other volunteers ranged from midwives, acupuncturists, to college students, to other doulas. And they come and go and come and go. It seemed like every week there were some leaving and more arriving. There are people all over the world who love and adore Robin, the head midwife and founder of the clinic, and so she attracts quite a following. Which is great as it replenishes the clinic with new volunteers all the time.
I have to say that although I personally hate living with other people and I hate not having a door to close and therefore no personal space, I must say that I loved living with this group of volunteers. They were all such completely different people and because of that I learned a lot from them.
As there were so many volunteers, we created a schedule for ourselves in terms of attending births at the clinic. I was on the schedule for 3ish 24 hour shifts a week. (it fluctuated each week- sometimes it was more, sometimes it was less.)
The clinic is in a little village just outside of the Monkey Forest in Ubud. Ubud is the cultural heart of Bali. Its a fabulous little city/village and quite honestly I would tell someone that if they were going to visit Bali that they should JUST stay in Ubud.

The clinic itself has 2 birthing rooms (with a birthing tub and 2 birthing beds in each room), a postpartum room with 3 beds for the mothers to rest on for 1-2 days post birth, an office, a room for western medicine treatments, a room for acupuncture and more eastern medicine treatments, a kitchen, and a midwives room where there is a bed, a tv, a laundry machine, and other necessities for the midwives to be able to exist there doing 24 hour shifts.

In 2005 the Bumi Sehat Clinic was doing some thing around 20 births a month (i believe) and now they are doing upwards of 50-60 births a month. Needless to say this is a time of great change for the clinic. They are also in the process of buying land so that they can build a new clinic - so that more women can have the option to give birth there and so they can provide other services.


During a birth at Bumi Sehat we use an array of methods for helping them along - acupuncture, acupressure, moxa (this is a Chinese herb that is like an incense stick. you burn it and hold it next to acupuncture points to aid the energy in the birthing woman- you can affect a lot of things with Chinese medicine in labor actually: turn babies, help them move further down the birth canal, help give the mother-to-be energy, help her push, help her calm down, help her sleep if need be, even help her cervix dilate.), massage therapy, suggestions of different positions, walking outside, using the birthing tub, herbs, homeopathics, and other healing modalities that the various volunteers bring with them through their unique trainings they have done in other places.
All in all, its pretty f-ing amazing. Sorry for the language, but really, its truly amazing to see the various ways in which these woman are supported and cared for. I know of NO OTHER location where as many modalities are used to aid women in giving birth. Its quite amazing.

Ok, so lets see what else. Currently the clinic holds 3 evenings of pre-natals. These are your standard prenatal visits - bp check, weight check, iron check, measuring the belly, talking with the woman and the couple about the pregnancy so far and in general a time of connecting and establishing a relationship with the clinic and the midwives. We also give out prenatal vitamins and any herbs we might think are appropriate.
There are also 2 days Bumi Sehat does an open acupuncture clinic - the ever wonderful Dr. Bobbi does this. She is an American woman living in Bali. She treats everything from newborns to the elderly during these clinic hours.

All of these are done on a free basis! Only donations are accepted, if the families feel the need to do so. Otherwise, most of these people would not be able to receive any form of medical treatment or be able to afford a hospital birth.
Pretty amazing!

and now, i guess i'll just show some pictures. I actually didn't end up taking too many pictures while at the clinic - there were so many beautiful births, so many amazing situations, but its a strange thing to 'break the moment' and take a picture. So here are a few pics and a few captions/stories
http://picasaweb.google.com/singularity211/BumiSehatBali

Welcome to my blog

WELCOME TO MY BLOG
HI! You can view photos from my trip here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/singularity211/BumiSehatBali