Mary's Story

When Mary came into the world this week, her mother passed onto the next. Before leaving us, she entrusted her daughter to the world's care. Tragically, Mary's mother bled to death from an easily preventable birth complication. Women in Africa have a 1 in 16 lifetime risk of dying in childbirth. Global campaigns for safe motherhood are targeting the leading causes of preventable loss of life but local solutions are needed to address local problems. Traditional birth attendants in villages are learning to sterilize knives for cutting the chord and methods for resolving obstructive labor. Grass roots campaigns in Tanzania are coming up with brilliant solutions like training taxi drivers how to deliver babies so that more mothers and babies survive when they cannot make it to the hospital or clinic in time.

Mary is a healthy, robust baby who is curious about everyone around her. She loves to engage in long "conversations" with her nurses who cannot help but stroke her silky black hair. Mary always turns into our touch asking for more. We speak to her of her mother, of her family who loves her but cannot be with her as they mourn her mother, of the day when those who love and will care for her will return for her. She seems calmed by the reassuring tone in our voices.

Many babies like Mary will be too much for a grieving father and relatives to parent in addition to the current demands of parenting older children in the family. Often, they end up, along with their older siblings, in nearby orphanages. By engaging fathers in bonding with their little ones while in the hospital and building their parenting competence through education and support, Infancy International hopes to strengthen the capacities of fathers and relatives to withstand such loss, accept the child who he associates with the death of a his wife, and take care of all his children to the best of his ability.

Infancy International engages the relatives to support the father and share the parenting responsibitilties. Where at all possible, building the capcities of a healthy home with significant kin sensitive to Mary's social and emotional needs, will bring about improved life-long cognitive, physical and emotional health and development, schooling, relationships and life opportunities. Helping all those invested in Mary's well-being learn ways to help her with the loss of her mother is essential to heal this emptiness and loss. Her memory of and connection to her mother in utero now abruptly taken from her must be addressed. Her task is to attach to a new mother or her father who will carry forward the sense of security and connection she felt ... someone who will "carry" the mother's voice which Mary has looked to for the last two months.

There are a number of simple, creative ways to teach this to her new caregiver and to monitor their progress with support. She and her parent can bond through therapeutic touch such as skin-to-skin care and massage. Mary can learn the heartbeat and the rhythm of breathing of the one to take her mother's place as she spends hours against the chest of this parent. She can be soothed by the parent who understands her unique physical and emotional needs following such a loss. Her immunity will be boosted, her growth optimized, her sense of self strengthened by the secure attachment she develops with this parent. Her caregiver must also be helped to move through and past the anger, fear and confusion regarding the loss of his or her loved one so as to be emotionally available to Mary.

Infacy International will follow this baby and her transition to her new family whether it be her kin or her orphanage family. We will keep provide updates on the progress of this promissing little girl.

Krista
Moshi, Tanzania