Page 10
THE BATTALION
THURSDAY, MAY 3, 1979
Midwifing dying?
Some consider home births safe, family-oriented
By CONNIE BURKE
Special to the Battalion
In a two-room shack, a slap and
then a newborn baby’s cry is heard.
Granny dips a sheet into warm water
and wipes her 303rd birth clean.
“Granny.”
That word may soon be a memory
of a neighborhood woman who de
livers babies in an economically poor
area.
A lay-midwife or granny is usually
an elderly woman who has been
trained by her mother or who has
taken a few midwife training sessions
at the county courthouse to deliver
babies for a low fee.
When hospitals refused to treat
blacks, lay-mid wives’ services saved
hundreds of lives. But today, their
services are decreasing. They must
compete with equal rights, welfare
programs and nurse-midwives.
Having a baby at home, with a
midwife and husband assisting, is
growing in popularity despite doc
tors’ warnings. The American Col
lege of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists argues that out-of
hospital birth poses a two- to five-
times greater risk to a baby’s life.
But affluent advocates of home
birth argue it enables the birth to
become a family-oriented experi
ence and can be handled safely. The
poor report it is a tradition because
hospital and doctor care is too expen
sive.
For the poor in the Bryan-College
Station area, home deliveries are
common.
The College Station Health De
partment lists Effie Harrison and
Melissa Cannard as midwives
operating in the Bryan-College Sta
tion area. But the hospitals have no
information on local midwives.
Effie Harrison has spent 50 of her
82 years delivering babies. She
charges $100 a delivery. Some
trained physicians will give mater
nity care to low-income women for a
comparable fee.
A local welfare program, coordi-
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REIT?
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or
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nated with the Family Planning Cen
ter, ofiers qualified women 9-month
prenatal care, hospital delivery and a
24-hour hospital stay for $200. There
are no local free clinics.
Harrison started her career in
1932. Since then, she has delivered
670 children, including several sets
of twins.
When she started delivering
babies, there were four other mid
wives in the area; she said, however,
she did not receive her training from
them, but the Lord. She and 24
other women took a midwife training
class in 1947 taught by two women,
neither a midwife. Members of the
class did not receive certificates,
Harrison said, but were told that
they could begin work.
When Harrison tried to locate the
other local midwives last January,
she said, all but two had died.
Who are the women who use
midwives?
They are not all close friends of the
midwife. Harrison said her Spanish
patients have a translator who tells
her how they feel. She helped
women in her neighborhood years
ago, she said, but now they are past
child-bearing age. Now, most of her
patients live in various parts of the
city and the Brazos River bottom
area.
Harrison put together her deliv
ery kit consisting of an apron, several
rolls of gauze, silver nitrate, Lysol,
safety pins, a tape measure, scales,
birth certificates, towels, a pair of
plastic gloves, soap, castor oil, petro
leum jelly, matches, and a hand
book.
Harrison’s midwife handbook is
more than 30 years old. If she wants
to replace it, her only choice is to
request a local book store to order a
particular book for her, since the
College Station Health Unit does not
furnish midwife handbooks.
Harrison talks calmly about deliv
ering babies.
“You’ve got to hurt to have a
baby,” Harrison said. “Some women
will get a pain and say ‘Oh, I’ve got a
pain’ and then you know you’re going
to be there for hours.”
She said women have asked her to
Battalion photo by Connie Burke
Effie Harrison, an 82-year-old local midwife, displays her
delivery Idt in her home. Harrison has delivered 670 babies
and says she will continue to do so long as the Lord enables her.
perform an abortion but she refuses
to help them. She says abortion is
murder.
Betty Strength, a registered nurse
who has worked at the College Sta
tion Health Unit 10 years, said she
thinks Harrison is very conscienti
ous.
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“We have never had a problem
with Effie or the babies she has de
livered,” Strength said. “She lets us
know when she has delivered one
and then we can do a PKU (phenyl
ketonuria, a test to check for a defi
ciency that may result in mental re
tardation) test on it.”
Dr. George Mcllhaney,
Strength’s supervisor and part-time
director of the health unit, said he
doesn’t think the local midwives
cooperate with the unit very well.
“We have been tempted to raise
legal action against these people,”
Mcllhaney said.
He said there is no one in the
Bryan-College Station area to train a
midwife unless it is another midwife.
He said he isn’t interested is teach
ing a midwifery training program.
“I don’t encourage anyone in be
coming a lay-midwife,” he said. “I
think all babies should be born in a
hospital.”
The midwife countered: “What
will they (the poor) do if no one takes
my place? That s a hard question to
answer. I can’t answer it. Can you?”
Midwife
B-CS poo
in deliverii
By CONNIE BUim
Special to the Batuli*
Changing from lay
costs to expensive hosp
ery fees will be an irritani
thin poeketbooks of the
stricken.
The inevitable change L
ing from a decreasing m
lay-midwives in the „
College Station area wif
less than 2 percent of the
tion.
This percentage maysefl
significant, but there arel
annual lav-midwife (Jl
Texas. Here wear
Doubt over the eomneB^ool- An
lay-midwifery has increase B , in § as P°
governments’ and phv3 m<>st an ', 1
interest in lay-midr^ 1 j Wlt \ ; , 1
Throughout the nation,sta|A', u nc } W ,
opting to restrict midwjfen 5 ta ^ e a l) T ° .,
tration to nurse-midwivti 5 l° u OI i/’
ing medical training willdi 6 ^* 011 u 11 .
infant mortality rates. IB us . e 1° ^ 1
A recent study of | ®" 1 c ! 'V go
College Station shine ndvouleft w.
only two from a class 0 f2f® hing h
trained in a 1947
course serving the
There is no indication anw i i
has been taken to incre^PT
number of local lay-midv 91 Sl, "|' < 'lllh
S pW,he r e m a i „„ ls «» e P^ t 5<»
there are no nurse-muK H 6 j
One local midwife v ,0 ? ,e ^ 0wd
time and the other is 82'”* n gl ' '
^Jsme of yo
,.9 and w ho i
® l ^nd some o
The
think
se women
the
landing.
there
„ Jfnd anothe
i-t “u 0 ^^Jchers) wh
wives serving the Bryar ^
Station area.
The; majority of Brjji
wife births have been <
by Effie Harrison, the
old.
When Harrison’s $ IOC
service is gone, whatwH
do?
Some local doctors say
will be forced to budget
come to pay medical <
But these are families
lowest income and so
many children.
The Bureau of Labor
concluded from a budj
that the average famil
S|w all the
'entured into
; Oh, you mij
hey pitched f
eoiester but
hat meteorol
lorts about tl
trategy this s
Bo you play
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•act game, g<
hat first wee
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But you con
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day ed with th
Hctices (clas
cially the lower income es( But ther
tends to spend almost ti| S() after
spr:
much for automobile and the . f
and upkeep as on And yo
According to an April J er save
story, witnesses in HoustM lst as you
tified that patients choose y OU f Q
lay-rnidwives for financi foil endecJ up
tural, and personal reax *^ You star
Most of Harrison s P^tBad of you
located in north B r y^ n i flLnd now, w
tract 5. More than htfBthe big pu S
area’s families are black iat( , ( i f rorn h .,
most half fall below th' '®e,- e
level, according to I970|M’ S time f or
Census records. wire one run
The correct number ()J S and two s
wives and babies delivt )ot i, men in u
midwives is unknown : cnow
many lay-inidwives are™
tered and do not turn bit!
tificates into the countyj
thouse.
me, >
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