Coming Home

I didn't expect to feel so changed by my eight days in the Dominican Republic.  I went from shock, to anger, to compassion,  to understanding about their birth practices.  The Dominican people are such kind hearted people.  They were so thankful for anything we gave!  I left Sunday morning with tears in my eyes.  I sat on the plane ride home listening to all the tan Americans talk about their week on beautiful DR beaches and I just cried and cried.  The people here had truly touched my heart.

Coming home is hard.  Questions start to scream at you in your head.  Why was I blessed enough to be born here and not there?  The DR is a short 2 1/2 hour plane ride away from me and yet the women suffer so much.  Why did God put me here and not there?  As I went grocery shopping for my family on Monday I just sighed at all the food.  Why should I be able to buy all this?  Why should I have access to all this food and education?  In the DR there is no welfare, no WIC, no public housing, no childbirth education classes.  Even the poor here in the US are rich to them.  A midwife shared with me that the OBs there get about $500 USD every two weeks (and that is IF the government pays them).  Homebirth midwives here charge around $2700 USD/birth.  We are living in pure wealth even when we think we have very little and struggle to meet our bills.  I always knew this in my head, but I had never experienced, even for one week, the realities of life in a third world country.  And even then, my experience was not the total Dominican experience.  I had an airconditioned hotel to come home to and money in my pocket.  I had clean water to drink, healthy food to eat, and the ability to leave the country whenever I needed to.

The suffering in pregnancy, labor, and childbirth there is intense.  As I tried to explain to my children about the DR they had many questions.  They even told me the hospital didn't look that bad to them.  And I suppose, looking at the pictures myself, they can't capture the full experience.  I learned that the Dominican doctors are suffering just like the women; they are overworked, underpaid, and lacking BASIC medical supplies.  They are frustrated with a medical system that doesn't work and a government that doesn't seem to care.  They want good care for women and that is why they keep coming to work even when they get no paycheck for months.  They know that women need support in labor (no family members are allowed) and a sanitary hospital.  They know women need to eat and drink in labor (only allowed if family members bring the food or water; most women starve during labor and postpartum.   There are no hospital meals).  They are doing the absoulute best with the hand God has dealt them.  What seems outrageous and brutal to us, begins to make sense when you start to see the full picture.  Heartbreaking; but  you begin to understand.