April 18

Today we went to visit Bimila and her new baby! Both of them are doing well and we had a wonderful visit. Bimila is a nurse and like me has had the fortune to be educated about normal birth and midwifery care. I find her inspirational as she stood up for herself in labour. Fortunately, she was able to choose to leave the hospital and go to a birthing centre where she was treated kindly and delivered a healthy baby girl vaginally. Without it, she may have been one of the many women in Nepal who has had unnecessary surgery. From the stories we are hearing it seems that either women have little to no care, or excessively medicalized births including high use of Pitocin inductions, episiotomies for vaginal births and Cesarean sections. Medicalization of childbirth is a global phenomenon that happens where development proceeds without midwifery style care. But even more than the over-medicalization of birth, the lack of care and compassion shown to birthing women is very disheartening. This is not a Nepali phenomenon however. All over the world, including parts of Canada, women lack autonomy, informed choice and compassionate respectful care. I feel that similar to Canada and our struggle for midwifery that was led by birthing women, it will be more Nepali women like Bimila standing up for themselves in order for birth to change here.

Our next stop was Patan Academy of Health Sciences to visit Dr. Bharal and Rashmi. Dr. Bharal is the rector of Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Rashmi, as mentioned earlier, was one of the founders of MIDSON and midwife extraordinaire. Dr. Bharal was very sick this last year and many people, including Cathy, are glad he is making a recovery. He is a community health specialist as well as a physician. We had a wonderful visit and were pleased to hear that there is a timeline of 2017 to start a midwifery program at Patan. We certainly hope it is true. If it goes ahead, Cathy will likely be able to support the program by finding volunteer experienced midwives from Canada who will help train the trainers for the program.

Our last stop yesterday was at Yangling, my favourite restaurant here so far. It is a Tibetan restaurant and Cathy and I are working through the menu. Last night I had chow mein. It was delicious and cost 140NPR about $2CAD. During our dinner there was thunder and impressive lightening! I am happy about the rain too – it will keep the dust down a bit.