Dear Dr. Masimo Serventi,
Thank you for alerting us to the prospect of minimizing CP; your reminding us of the ounce of prevention versus a pound of cure touched me deeply, of which I would like to share an anecdote to our members.
Our daughter-in-law had asked my wife,Lisa, who had taught her about "Active Birth", if she could accompany her during childbirth. The mother had had her first child by C section, yet had read that having a normal vaginal delivery after having had a C sectio was possible. The birth was being supervised by doctors and midwives at a hospital in northern Germany. The labor had been lengthy and the mother was already exhausted when she was given the nod to push through her contractions, the cervix haven finally been fully opened. But despite the baby's coming close to crowning, the baby came back up. An older doctor recognized the cause, that the cord was around the baby's neck, and immediately cut the cord, and then shortly after the baby was born. However, the baby was blue and not responding. Lisa and the father were apprehensive, that it might be a stillbirth.
The doctor was preparing to take the baby to ER, and came up to the lifeless baby and blew into its face., but nothing happened, and he began to take the baby to ER, when the father, having watched the doctor blowing into the face of the baby, blew into the baby's face - with determination, no doubt in desperation, and lo and behold the baby's eyes opened, and she began to respond, and the doctor came back to make sure she was OK, which she was. Despite having suffered fetal distress, she was born reasonably healthy, with the help of a timely blow in her face.
I hope this might be of use to some of our members.
Thanks again Dr.Masimo,
With best wishes, Daniel
CHIFA profile: Daniel Stern is a HIFA Representative and member of the mHIFA WG. He is a member of Uganda MCH TWG. Daniel is Co-founder of the educational NGO Uconnect, and of the Innovation Hub, Hive Colab, and is also Cofounder of ISOC Uganda and Uganda IXP. He is a UN WSA National Expert. His Uconnect team distributes off-line E-Learning content, including Hesperian Health Guides to schools in East Africa since 2008. During his six-years as Lead for Uganda Mobile Monday he regularly organized events with mobile health themes, usually in collaboration with UNICEF’s Uganda team, and their pan African IntraHealth efforts to improve interoperative healthcare systems, both within and between countries, in mHero, such that developer- entrepreneurs’s apps would align with the latest trends by MoH policies. DStern AT Uconnect.org
