The seed for Kybele came as a result of my Fulbright Scholarship to Turkey, from 1997 to 1999. I was commissioned to start a pain-relief service at a Turkish hospital, and I saw that they had very little pain management for women in labor. Also, they routinely used general anesthesia for C-sections, which increased the mothers' health risk and prevented them from remembering their children's birth. My passion for this work grew out of that experience, when I was helping women feel comfortable during the experience of childbirth, instead of just suffering through it. Not that I believe that every woman should have an epidural—but I do think they should have a choice. And every woman deserves the right to have the safest possible labor and delivery.
It was my husband's idea to start the nonprofit. We incorporated in 2001, and I had my daughter in April 2002. My friend, who's an attorney in Wichita, Kansas—her firm incorporated us. The rest of it was exposing other professionals to the need for better-quality labor-and-delivery practices in the developing world. It was like lighting a candle and creating a grass fire. All of the doctors and program leaders who go on our trips are volunteers. They pay their own way. Doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia have participated.
Programs
The program leaders lead a group of people who train local health-care providers. We have programs in eight countries: Turkey, Croatia, Georgia, Armenia, Romania, Brazil, Ghana, and Egypt. There are usually 8 to 16 professionals on a trip. We have a two-week intervention model that's really working. We usually host an international meeting, then spread out throughout the country into the major teaching hospitals.
When we went to the Republic of Georgia in September 2006, conditions were much poorer than we had expected. Many of the former Soviet countries are cut off from training examples and basic equipment. We saw anesthesiologists using only an occasional finger on the pulse to monitor patients during surgery. Entire surgeries were performed without the patient's blood pressure being taken or oxygen level checked. Women with C-sections were given muscle relaxants, and some were basically awake for the surgeries.
The doctors there, they didn't really know that there are simpler and safer alternatives. We worked to influence national legislation to make medications available so women could receive epidural and spinal anesthesia for labor and C-sections. In some countries, women and babies routinely die during childbirth, often from preventable causes. Kybele is saving lives and improving the working conditions of health-care providers.
The Balancing Act
Jozy, my daughter, has been to Turkey 10 times, and twice each to Croatia, Mexico, and Canada. My husband is Turkish, and his primary business is in Turkey, so half the year he's out of the country. Then I'm a single mom. But our daughter is very used to our lifestyle in terms of traveling—we come and go on these things, and that's all she's ever known.
Last year we did a Christmas card drive to help fund-raise for Kybele, and Jozy helped. She packed the cards and stuffed the envelopes. It's wonderful that she wants to be involved. In her own way, she sees the big picture. Last year while I was in Ghana, she called me to say, "I'm so proud of you, Mommy, helping all those ladies and babies." She wasn't thinking of herself and my absence. It brought tears to my eyes.
