CASA Midwifery Students Put Their Skills to Use

The CASA midwifery students went to study in nearby Mayan villages after attending an informative knowledge exchange at the Universidad Intercultural Maya. Ema, Angie, Carmen Susana, Abi, Lupita, Elisa, and I stayed with traditional midwife Doña Bernardina in the small town of Chunhuhub, where we slept in hammocks at the rundown former health center she uses as a clinic.

Doña Bernardina practices several kinds of alternative medicine, including herbal baths, ceremonies, chiropractic adjustments, and emotional and spiritual counseling. She also sells salves and medicines, and sees no contradiction in referring patients to the local health center for simultaneous treatment on occasion. The students watched her attend to patients with fevers, depression and high blood pressure, and learned how to make a salve for labor massage using arnica, oregano, belladonna and other herbs cooked over an open fire. 

The students offered prenatal care at the health center and gave talks on contraception at a middle school and in a public park, distributing condoms to taxi drivers, checking blood pressure, and explaining contraceptive options from the patch to IUDs. They also showed traditional midwives how to use analog thermometers, plastic umbilical cord clamps, and other equipment in a kit provided by the school.

The students were interested in the homeopathic and herbal medicines but put off by the unclean conditions of Dona Bernardina's improvised clinic. They supported the health center doctor's encouragement of breast-feeding, though they resented his underestimation of their medical knowledge. Their experiences in Chunhuhub gave these future professional midwives a firsthand look at the ways traditional midwives practice complementary therapies in rural Mexico.