Jeri Gunderson is a tall, slim, wiry American on a mission. Warm and enthusiastic, she talks easily about her life and work in the Philippines. Huddling in a corner of the Shiphrah Birthing Home on the rim of Metro Manila, she chats with my daughter, my mother and me, as we try to keep out of the way of a deluge of pregnant women wandering through for pre-natal classes and health checks.
Jeri first arrived in Manila almost twenty seven years ago, with her husband and five children, as missionaries, sent to set up a church in Taytay.
Midwifery was a sideline that has become a life’s work, although she clarifies quickly that she fell into midwifery, and has had no formal training. Her first teacher was a hippie from Seattle, who she helped casually to deliver babies. Midwifery is one of the oldest professions for women, and these two women, self-taught and learning through experience, were obviously doing something right. After one birth – “a baby I just happened to catch,” she laughs self-deprecatingly – the new mother asked her to come to her village to teach other women about pre-natal care. And so it all began, quite by chance.
Despite a lack of formal training, Jeri obviously had the knack for delivering babies successfully, and the women were soon lining up at the door. After delivering babies in her spare room for four years on a diet of adrenalin and no sleep, she felt it was time to move the birthing centre elsewhere. “Every one of my kids had been thrown out of bed to make way for a birth,” she laughs. “But we are risk takers, and somebody is nobody if we don’t do it.”
As I think I have mentioned before, the name Shiphrah (pronounced Shif-ra), is taken from the biblical story of Moses, in which two midwifes bravely defy Herod by preventing the genocide of Hebrew boys. Almost five hundred babies are delivered here annually, and the staff has grown from five to twenty seven. Jeri has safely delivered many children into the world over the years but these days she is happy to watch from the sidelines, handing those duties over to a team of trained midwives that includes her daughter, Deborah Gustafson.
“I don’t see myself as a midwife,” she confesses. Yet after giving birth to six of her own, she clearly wants to share the joy of childbirth. As one woman heads home, beaming proudly down at a tiny bundle of daughter delivered only hours before, Jeri says, “My gift is to create a space where things like this can happen.” And she gets plenty of joy in return, watching families come through a happy birth together.
The efforts of Jeri and her team to deliver children safely into the world have the full support of the World Health Organization, which states that:
‘Midwifery services are [vital] to a healthy and safe pregnancy and childbirth. Worldwide, approximately 287 000 women die every year due to pregnancy and childbirth related complications. Most of these largely preventable deaths occur in low-income countries and in poor and rural areas… Many maternal and newborn deaths can be prevented if competent midwives assist women before, during and after childbirth and are able to refer them to emergency obstetric care when severe complications arise.’
Yes, I know I have quoted that piece before, but its worth repeating.
At Shiphrah, midwives provide not only assistance during birth, but pre-natal training
and maternal accountability, which Jeri sees as vital for safe home births. And everyone on the team at Shiphrah works to ensure that the birth of each child is a safe, nurturing, and affirming event for every mother, a privilege that perhaps we, from more developed countries, take for granted.
“We could change the world with an army of midwifes,” Jeri claims, with a smile.
With thanks to the Shiphrah website for photos.
Adapted from an article first published in Inklings, February 2014.