I am sitting With 2011 CNN Nominee Hero Robin Lim in her bungalow in Ubud Bali. This unassuming midwife has been a true hero in her village taking many low income women and giving them the opportunity to bringing their babies into this world naturally and with love. As we sat over a cup of tea I asked her a few questions.
What inspired you to become a midwife?
Thirty-five years ago I became a teenage mom. My daughter, Déjà, was born gently and safely at home. My first experience of having a baby was about as natural as birth can be, and though I didn’ t know it at the time, it set my feet on a path that eventually led me to become a childbirth author and a midwife. I became a passionate seeker of childbirth knowledge. I found that the research points to the fact that being born without trauma is the foundation for having an intact capacity to love and trust. I learned that a healthy society is made up of loving, trusting individuals, and that these individuals in turn protect their environment, become stewards of our land, air and water, and they make peace, rather than war. I came to the conclusion that bringing Humans to earth with an intact ability to LOVE is essential if we are to survive as a species. So, I became a fierce advocate for gentle birth as a solution for the most pressing problems of our times. A solution that begins at the source. Gentle Birth, protecting mother and baby, is a solution that I believe will result in positive change for our society.
And then, something else happened that fired my passion into action . . .
Twenty years ago Christine Jehle Kim died due to a complication of her third pregnancy. Medical interventions beginning in her youth led to hypertension related difficulties with Christine’ s heart and circulation. Toward the end of her pregnancy, she suffered a stroke in her sleep, and never woke up. Christine was my younger sister. My sister and the baby she was carrying died in the United States of America. They died in the country that spends more money on pregnancy and birth technology than any other country in this world.
Statistically, the United States rates number thirty-nine in maternal mortality. This means that it is safer to be pregnant and to give birth in thirty-eight other countries than the US . . . and less expensive too.
According to Amnesty International’ s report Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the US, there is a largely ignored health care calamity in the United States of America that sees between two and three women die every day during pregnancy and childbirth.
World wide that number is exponentially higher: nearly a thousand women die every day from pregnancy and birth related complications. What is even more discouraging is that according to Amnesty International, the number of maternal deaths is significantly understated because of a lack of effective data collection in the USA, and may I add, in the world. Pregnant women who are at risk for suffering complications and even dying, are in the prime of their lives; minorities, those living in poverty, Native American and immigrant women, and those who speak little or no English are most affected.
My sister had health insurance; she should have been warned by her doctors that she was at risk, but she was a minority. The doctors took little interest in her as an individual, and she fell through the cracks. And died.
My passion for maternal and child health led me to continue my studies and pursue the path of midwifery. Not long after my sister’s death, I moved to Bali, Indonesia with my family. While I was pregnant with my fifth child, my son Hanoman, I faced inadequate healthcare for myself and the other pregnant women I came to know in Bali.
