Sweet baby...new life is worth the pain!

here is sweet Nazeela the day before she went to the hospital with one of her older sons...Azad...who is 19 or 20...no one here really knows their bday! they all like to say Jan.1st. anyway...i will remember this bday though!
this is shortly after arriving at the hospital. this pic really does not do it justice. you cannot see the grime on the floor and walls or the stains on the beds. you cannot smell that the bathroom is the next room and smells horrible. you don't know what is going through her mind right now as she remembers two years ago in that very bed her last son was pulled from her body and forever deformed. so she chose this time to have a "safe" c-section. after arriving at the hospital at 7:30 we were finally given some notice at 9...at which point they said she did not have all the proper paperwork, so we then went from office to office to pay a few fees and get some bloodwork done and then her husband donated blood so she could have some extra should she need it during the surgery...although i don't know that they checked to see that they had matching blood types...then she had to have an EKG...it was a very OLD machine and she had to humiliatingly strip before an old man doctor who was wanting to practice his english with me and tell me liked christians...very bizarre situation...finally we get all the right paperwork and return to the maternity hall. there are several women there. i never heard any sounds from laboring women though...there were 4 rooms and 6 beds in each room. Nazeela shared her room with 3 other women. 2 also had csections before her. they each returned totally drugged up and in extreme pain. the other woman had lost her baby...she went into premature labor and her baby died at 7 months along. her eyes were the saddest eyes i have looked into...this was her 6th baby to lose. my heart was crying out for her. i was hoping to be able to go into surgery with Nazeela, but at the last minute they kicked me out. i suppose it was a good thing though. the baby was brought out after 20 minutes or so. she was perfect and all swaddled up...literally in strips of cloth...they do not wash the babies there. they have minimum care. you bring your own blankets, pillows, clothes, diapers, food, etc. they practically threw the baby at us and then went back in to sew her up. they put her all the way under and hardly cleaned her up after surgery. it was horrifying when she came out. she was delirious and they made us move her from the gurney to another gurney and wheel her down the hall ourselves and into her room and then move her again onto her own bed. the whole time she is crying out in pain. for the next few hours...we tried to care for her needs and help her come to. she would cry out..."i'm dying, i'm dying". i was so sad for her that she chose this way to bring her baby into the world. she wasn't even able to hold her or hardly look at her. even today 3 days later she doesn't even hold her. she is in too much pain. she is conscious now of course and doing much better, but she didn't bond with her baby right away. there has been so much shame and fear built up around childbirth that she felt she had no other choice than to have a c-section. her eldest daughter who just got married assisted too and was horrified and is saying she does not want children...but of course she knows she has too, but already is so afraid.
but i look at this little baby and it's worth it...it's worth the pain...but they are so filled with fear that they can hardly see past their own pain. but i was so priviledged to be the first to speak words of life over this precious child. i was the first to give her a bath and wash away all the old life and believe that she will not know fear and death the way her family has.
here is her 12 year old sister zeelan seeing her for the first time.
and here i am with this precious new life...Lavine! Nazeela is passed out behind me. there is so much more to say about this whole experience. it hasn't decreased my desire to have more children and maybe this is God's way of giving me more children...i have a dream and passion growing in my heart to teach these women about how it can be...that there can be hope and joy in childbirth...i don't know how it will all come about...somedays i hardly feel like i have enough time or energy to just clean and feed my own 3 children...but it is burning in my heart right now...