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Hannah Anderson, |
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| MARLA: What helps you get through those sort of experiences or traumas or -- HANNAH: What was that? MARLA: What helps you get through those sort of situations? HANNAH: What help? MARLA: Yeah. HANNAH: You -- from -- MARLA: I mean -- HANNAH: From who? MARLA: -- personally, I would find it really difficult, and I wonder how you're able to do it and keep doing it. HANNAH: You get support from -- from the people. They -- they -- my village people are so supportive, they encourage you. And they stand behind you on things. You know. They know if you need a vacation or you need to take a break, you know, they will cover for you and type of thing. So they just make you feel -- well, anyway, it's kind of rewarding when you feel like you're helping somebody. MARLA: Yeah. HANNAH: You know. And that makes up for what you went through. MARLA: Right. HANNAH: I think. MARLA: Did you ever have to deliver babies? HANNAH: Not -- no. Not totally. I was thinking what point. Okay. Anyway, yeah, we do -- we did a lot of prenatal care, you know, taking care of women that's pregnant from day one -- MARLA: Right. HANNAH: -- on all the way. Our -- our advice, which our CIs always said, health aides don't deliver babies. Meaning you do all the prenatal stuff but you make sure that patient's going to be -- MARLA: Sent to the hospital. HANNAH: -- sent to the hospital or be with the doctor once they are okay. So. MARLA: We were talking about -- you said that -- HANNAH: The reason I said that health aides don't deliver babies? MARLA: Right. HANNAH: It's because we encouraged the mother to be -- we just do prenatal. MARLA: Right. HANNAH: We wait and we do it. But help. Public Health nurses would come out and help us, too, you know. MARLA: So did most people not deliver at home, most people would go to -- HANNAH: All the time I was here, people that had babies went -- went into town. MARLA: Okay. HANNAH: Yeah. The whole time I was a health aide here. But we had one family that lived down at Old Town. She went in to have her babies, the first two. The second one -- I mean, the third one she kind of -- I encouraged her, you know, you go in, you go in three weeks ahead of time. MARLA: Right. HANNAH: Or two weeks before baby. And it was in the summer and they'd come back and forth from Old Town, Old Bettles, up to here by boat. And she already had two little ones, and so she was pretty much tied down with them, I guess, didn't want to leave them or something, or her husband was busy with tourist clients and stuff like that. And -- and so I did her prenatal stuff, and I kept saying, you know, you need to go into town pretty soon. You're going to need to go into town pretty soon. Well, she didn't, she didn't, and she went in -- evidently, she went into labor down there in Old Town. Her husband was busy with clients, knowing that she was in labor. And so last trip, he went down, picked her up, was bringing her up, and some truck from FAA or somewhere down there picked her -- met the boat, picked her up, and she delivered in the back of the truck. [Dr. Beth Baker reports that she actually delivered the baby.] MARLA: Oh, my gosh. Wow. HANNAH: Yeah. And so by the time we got her -- Naomi and I, of course, was alerted, you know, at the clinic. And we did what we had to do. The baby was born. And... MARLA: Tied the tube or -- HANNAH: Naomi got into that. She clamped and cut the cord, took the baby inside, warmed up the clinic really warm, took the baby inside, she was taking care of the baby. I'm tending to the mother. MARLA: Right. HANNAH: In the back of that truck still. Who was shaking and just kind of like a little bit going into shock, I thought. MARLA: Yeah. HANNAH: You know, it looked that way. And so I took care of her. Wrapped her up and took care of her. Whole situation. Moved her into the clinic. And Naomi and I both took care of -- stabilized everything. You know, baby was fine. Naomi had her all -- had him all wrapped up and cooing, looking cute, and the mother is sitting back there. And anyway, then mother, baby went into town that afternoon. MARLA: Wow. HANNAH: That -- we actually didn't deliver the baby. MARLA: Right. HANNAH: It was born already -- MARLA: Born. HANNAH: -- when we got it. Which was -- I didn't know, I think I would rather be there, you know. MARLA: Yeah. HANNAH: We didn't know how sterile, how anything was at that point. MARLA: In the back of a truck doesn't sound -- HANNAH: Yeah. MARLA: -- too clean. HANNAH: Had an old jacket or something. MARLA: Yeah. Yeah. HANNAH: You know, or something. But everything turned out fine. MARLA: Well, that's good. HANNAH: Yeah. She came back later on with a cute little baby. MARLA: Well -- HANNAH: Stuff like that, you don't know what you're going to get into. MARLA: Yeah. | |
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Last updated 11-4-06
Last updated 11-4-06