by Jennifer Burden | May 8, 2016 | 2016, International, Mission Motherhood
As part of World Moms Blog’s collaboration with BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™, our World Moms are writing posts on maternal health around the world. In today’s post, we are celebrating Mother’s Day by sharing photos and thoughts on the holiday from around the world!
“Mother’s Day is a relatively recent practice in India and takes place the 2nd Sunday in May in India, like in the U.S. For me, as a daughter, it’s about calling up my mother and my mother-in-law and wishing them well. We all chuckle over the fact that earmarking only one day for moms seems so inadequate. As for my son, he usually wishes me a Happy Mother’s Day and ropes his father in to cook something special for me. This is a welcome change for me, as here, in India, we cook fresh meals at least every day, if not thrice a day for every meal!” — Piya Mukherjee, India
Read more stories and photos on Mother’s Day around the world in our post, “How families celebrate Mother’s Day around the world“, over at BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™!
And also check out our World Moms Blog Instagram Feed on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 8th, 2016!
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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by Jennifer Burden | May 2, 2016 | 2016, Maternal Health
Did you know we have a World Mom on board who is very active in running the Promise Walk for Preeclampsia? Sarah Hughes in the USA, has organized a walk each year for the past 5 years and has raised 10’s of thousands of dollars for the Preeclampsia Foundation.
World Mom, Sarah Hughes, and her family at the Promise Walk for Preeclampsia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the USA.
What lit the fire under her to get things started? Check out her initial post for World Moms Blog in 2012 about her experience with preeclampsia, which can be fatal in pregnant mothers worldwide. The symptoms are high blood pressure and protein in the urine. For more about preeclampsia, head on over to the Preeclampsia Foundation.
And if you’re on twitter, join us tonight to help us raise awareness or maybe just grab a great giveaway from Happy Super Foods or Udderly Smooth for the cause! 😉
The hashtag is #PreAm16. You can follow along by doing a search on Twitter for that hashtag anytime during or after the party. To join in the chat, come during party time — 9pm EDT. I will be on Twitter along with some of our World Moms. Hope to see you there!
Can’t make the party? It’s not too late to donate to Sarah’s upcoming Promise Walk for Preeclampsia this weekend!
Jennifer Burden, Founder and CEO, World Moms Blog
You can also check out Sarah’s personal blog at Finnegan and the Hughes!
P.S. (And, keep up the great work, Sarah! We are proud of you!)
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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by World Moms Blog | Apr 14, 2016 | 2016, Asia, China, Maternal Health, Mission Motherhood, To-Wen Tseng
As part of World Moms Blog’s collaboration with BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™, our World Moms are writing posts on maternal health around the world. In today’s post, To-wen Tseng shares a story from China about a mother-to-be who had to search for a hospital that would let her breastfeed her baby.
“Seven years ago when Jane Wang was preparing for the birth of her first child in Beijing, she came across a very unexpected obstacle.
During a hospital prenatal interview, she asked about the breastfeeding arrangements for after the baby was born. The staff simply told her, ‘You don’t have to breastfeed. The hospital will arrange high-quality infant formula for your baby.'”
Please read the full post, “Moms in Chinese hospitals told not to breastfeed their babies?” over at BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™!
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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by Kristyn Zalota | Apr 12, 2016 | 2016, Asia, Birthing, Clean Birth Kits, Health, Uncategorized, World Moms Blog, World Voice
A new mom in Laos Photo Credit: Kristyn Zalota
It’s over 100 degrees Farenheit and I am dripping sweat as we enter the home of a mother who has recently given birth at a Lao hospital using a Clean Birth Kit, supplied by my organization CleanBirth.org. She is wearing a long skirt and hooded sweatshirt. Under the platform bed where she sleeps a clay pot is filled with glowing coals. Her newborn baby sleeps under blankets with mittens on her tiny hands and a knit cap. The mother, sweating profusely, is drinking piping hot herbal tea. She eats chicken four times a day and showers in the hottest water she can tolerate four times a day. Her four older children and husband are nearby, taking care of her and the household while she recovers.
This is a good birth story in Laos where my organization CleanBirth.org works. This mother birthed naturally with a Clean Birth Kit under the watchful eye of a trained midwife. Her traditions were respected and she and baby left the hospital healthy.
A baby needlessly dies.
However, many birth stories in Laos don’t tell the tale of mothers and babies surviving birth. A nurse at a rural clinic told of a 45-year old mother, pregnant with baby #14, who came into the clinic for help during labor. Her membranes had been ruptured for 29 hours and she arrived at the clinic exhausted. After a normal vaginal delivery, the newborn could breastfeed but was weak. He died 9 hours after birth, likely of an infection. The clinic does not have IV antibiotics, so the nurses were powerless to fight the infection.
World Moms help CleanBirth.org empower nurses.
CleanBirth.org Founder Kristyn Zalota training nurses in Laos
My visit to Laos last month was my fifth training trip with CleanBirth.org, the organization I started in 2012 to empower women in Laos to have safer births. Since 2012, we have provided 5,000 Clean Birth Kits and training for over 250 nurses.
This March, with my Lao partner organization ACD, we trained 71 nurses in the use and distribution of Clean Birth Kits and the WHO’s Essentials of Newborn Care.
Five of those nurses were fully funded by World Moms Blog donors, who gave $1,100 during our February fundraising campaign.
Our twice-annual trainings give nurses new skills and confidence. We also supply them with as many birth kits as they need throughout the year.
The trainings and subsequent improvement in care in the 31 clinics we serve, has led my Lao partner organization to ask that we fund an additional 13 clinics and a local hospital. When we visited the local hospital, midwives there told us that of the 50 births they see per month, 35-40 mothers bring with them our ayzh Clean Birth Kits — which they received at their local clinic. The midwives praised the convenience/effectiveness of the kits. They asked CleanBirth.org to provide around 10-15 kits per month directly to their hospital for mothers who don’t have a kit. This we will do.
It is a huge endorsement of our program to have our local partner and a hospital asking to expand our work to new areas. This means that they are seeing the benefits and that locals are deciding the future direction of the project. They are in charge.
My role as founder of CleanBirth.org will be to continue finding funding for kits and training. For just $5 we can prevent an infection like the one mentioned above. If you’d like you join our small but mighty effort please donate www.cleanbirth.org/donate.
Thank you World Moms for all of your support!
Kristyn brings her years of experience as an entrepreneur and serial volunteer to CleanBirth.org. She holds a MA, has run small businesses in Russia and the US, and has volunteered in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Uganda on projects related to women’s empowerment.
After having children, Kristyn became an advocate for mothers in the US, as a doula and Lamaze educator, and abroad, as the Founder of CleanBirth.org. She is honored to provide nurses in Laos with the supplies, funding and training they need to lower maternal and infant mortality rates in their villages.
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by Elizabeth Atalay | Apr 5, 2016 | 2016, Birthing, Pregnancy, Social Good, World Moms Blog, World Voice
Photo Credit: March of Dimes
The tiny translucent fingers of a premature baby are stark reminders of the fragility of newborn life no matter where in the world a baby is born. When I asked a friend who works for the March of Dimes exactly what it was that the organization did I was struck that I knew so little about it. While I had traveled in the past few years on maternal and newborn health reporting trips to Ethiopia and South Africa, and written for a number of global non-profits on related issues, I was unaware that the March of Dimes was fighting for Newborn lives right here in the US.
As a mother of four and the daughter of a Polio survivor I am an active advocate for global vaccines with the United Nations Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign where one of our major goals is global Polio eradication. The March of Dimes was Founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 to eradicate Polio in the US, I was fascinated to find out that the March of Dimes had led the fight against Polio eradication, and although it still exists in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it was successfully eradicated in the US in 1979. Thanks in large part to the March of Dimes campaign.
The robust infrastructure of the March of Dimes was then shifted to tackle birth defects, and in the mid 1980s shifted to Community, Advocacy, Research, Education and Support services around premature birth. (the birth of an infant before 37 weeks of pregnancy). Premature babies can have serious health problems at birth and that last later into life, and about 1 in 10 babies in the US are born prematurely.
According to the March of Dimes Global Action Report on Preterm Birth; Born Too Soon :
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15 million babies in the world are born prematurely each year, and that number is rising.
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Preterm birth is the greatest cause of neonatal death, in the first 28 days of life.
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It is the second leading cause of death in children under the age of 5 years old.
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60% of preterm births occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
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75% of the deaths of premature babies could be prevented with proper medical care
Here in the US the preterm birth rate is at 9.6% , while across 184 countries of the world the statistics range from 5 to 18% for preterm birth rates per 100 live births. That means that here in the US, I was shocked to learn, we only get a report card grade of a C. You can find out where your country ranks on the Born Too Soon Global Map as well.
There is a lot of research going on to find out what factors cause preterm birth, because even healthy mothers who have done everything right during pregnancy can experience it. The risk factors that are associated with it include mothers of multiples, or who have previously had a preterm birth. Getting little or no prenatal care, being overweight or underweight during pregnancy, smoking, drinking alcohol, and drug use are all known to contribute. But there are demographics as well, if you are under 17 or over 35 these are risk factors, and here in the US researchers are working hard to find out why race also seems to play a part in the statistics.
Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait® is a comprehensive initiative by the March of Dimes to prevent preventable preterm birth, with a focus on reducing elective deliveries before 39 weeks gestation. Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait involves an education and awareness campaign, hospital quality improvement and community intervention programs. These strategies are focused on interventions and activities that have the potential to make an immediate, substantial and measurable impact on preterm birth. – www.marchofdimes.org
My friend Michelle invited me for a tour of the NICU at Women & Infants Hospital to see the work being done there by the March of Dimes. There was a stark differences between the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit that I had visited in Ethiopia at the Black Lion Hospital on my International Reporting Project Fellowship and the one we toured here in Rhode Island. I could see it had a lot to do with the presence of the March of Dimes. On the sterile 6 year old 50,000 sq. foot wing here in Rhode Island 82 babies can receive care. In the corner of the floor an entire center for family support provides programs, food, and a fun filled space for siblings to play. The support given in the hospital space seems an extension of the March of Dimes website where it encourages community support through the Share your story feature .
Photo Credit: March of Dimes
On my tour I could not help but think of the mothers I had seen across the world in Ethiopia in the largest NICU in the country with only three incubators and one nurse for every 10 babies. The mothers folded over their teeny babies with the same concerned and protective stance as the ones I saw here in Rhode Island, but with the difference of a world of support from the March of Dimes programs at hand. I was happy to learn that over the past 15 years the March of Dimes Global Programs have formed alliances with partners on the ground to help improve birth outcomes in developing countries around the world as well. All mothers love their babies with the same fierce intensity no matter where they live, and all babies deserve the chance to survive no matter where in the world they are born. I was impressed to learn about all that the March of Dimes programs do to see that happen.
This is an original post written by Elizabeth Atalay of Documama for World Moms Blog.
Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.
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by World Moms Blog | Mar 22, 2016 | 2016, Africa, Maternal Health, Mission Motherhood, Water
As part of World Moms Blog’s collaboration with BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™, our World Moms are writing posts on maternal health around the world. In today’s post, Jennifer Burden writes about the importance of clean water on maternal health in the developing world. She is wearing blue today to advocate for World Water Day!
“Water is an integral part of birthing around the world, yet many mothers lack access to it. In fact, an organization that works globally to help people gain access to clean water, WaterAID, recently ran a campaign linking motherhood and water access by comparing the things women packed in their maternity bags in the areas they serve around the world.
The post went viral.
With over 2 million estimated headline views and almost 17,000 Facebook shares, the story was carried on major web sites including BabyCenter!
What captured the interest of the masses? See for yourself…”
Read the full post, “Quick! Boil the water…she’s having the baby!” over at BabyCenter’s Mission Motherhood™!
Photo credit to: Sophie Burden
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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