Angella's birth (and pics of the birthing room)

Angella's baby was the first that I have had the privilege of delivering here. It was her first baby, she came in alone and laboured extremely well. There are no pain relief options beyond paracetamol and so she was completely in control and open to ideas about changing positions to make the birth easier. She prayed throughout most of the labour, for strength to get through it and for a good birth. She had a lovely calm birth of a baby girl who at 3.88kg was pretty big compared to the average baby here. She was kneeling for the birth, and although this is my favourite position too, she had decided for herself after we'd tried a few positions that this was most comfortable. What struck me most was her reaction afterwards though. She wanted to know how much the baby weighed, she wanted us to take pictures and for her to have the baby nearby and we had the baby feeding pretty quickly. The mother's here do generally seem a bit more distant from their babies somehow and not as interested as Angella was about her little girl. She called her husband, but told me he wouldn't be coming in to visit, but I did meet Grandma who was full of thanks and praise. And rightly so for another little baby made it!
To give you an idea of where this all took place, I took some photos at various times when the birthing room was empty:

 So on one side of the room there are two delivery beds which can be separated by a curtain

 and on the other side there is a mattress on the floor, either used if the other beds are full or for more active births if the woman/midwife don't want to use the bed. This is where Angella had her baby :-)

 this is the room from one doorway to the other. You can still see the mattress on the floor in the back left corner of the picture and the curtains on the right where the beds are. Through the doorway is clinic - you can just see blue curtains where the antenatal women come and we check them. The corner of the room nearest to the baby scales in the picture is storage and drug cupboards etc.

And through the doorway the other side is the ward. You can see 4 beds on the right and there are 4 on the left of the ward that you can't see in the picture too. This can be antenatal or postnatal women. I took it when they were mostly outside eating dinner, it was actually full it just doesn't look it! It is pretty much always busy.

So you can see that it is pretty small, but actually pretty nice considering where we are. They could do with some more equipment (just more of the basic things like BP machines, tape measures, fetal heart dopplers that work, thermometers etc) but it is set up pretty well.