Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1, Transcript Section 6

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Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1
Transcript Section 6

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KAREN: What -- what did the villages do before there was radios to call back and forth, like when your mother was a midwife?

WILLA: She -- there was the -- they kind of relayed -- relied on the school teachers there.

IRENE: Yeah, school teachers.

WILLA: And they were expected to handle broken bones.

IRENE: They used to do things before the health aides came. You know, like take care of, like, broken bones and bad colds and... I think they used to report --

WILLA: Because they had -- the single-sideband was at the principal's house at White Mountain before they moved it to the school.

And down -- florescent lights would interfere, they got a lot of static, and they would be nice enough to let us -- to turn the lights off for us when we were holding radio traffic.

KAREN: So you'd sit in the dark?

WILLA: No. So they sat in the dark. And the regular light bulbs didn't bother it but the florescent lights did.

IRENE: Another thing, them radios weren't even dependable. They had a lot of static.

WILLA: No.

IRENE: And really get frustrated.

WILLA: One time -- one time one of my cousins was he said he was passing the radio room, and all he could hear on the radio was one of the health aides reporting, he's sick. Over. But those are the days when we first started.

KAREN: So did your mother do traditional healing as well as midwife?

WILLA: No, she did mostly -- she mostly delivered babies. They would call her. And it was something she didn't always do but I don't know how many babies she ended delivering. She delivered my oldest son and helped with my youngest daughter of my kids.

And then when the sonogram first came to the -- to the hospital, they saw one of my prenatals, and they had the due date not -- a month later, so she ended up going into labor in the village. And I ended up calling my -- my mom. And she was wondering how come the fundal height was so high, and she was in active labor.

So mama was there and was checking her fundal height was really high. She told me to go and report to the doctor that the fundal height was still really high, and she was in active labor. So I went to another home to use their phone, and when I came back, she told me, you go right back and tell them a foot came out. So I did. And when I went back, both of the feet were out.

And a week before that, we were practicing with delivering babies in case of a baby being born by footling.

KAREN: Breach?

WILLA: Yeah. And we practiced. So I did that. The baby was stuck around the waist and was turning blue, so very slowly I lifted him up and I checked under his neck for the umbilical cord, and I made sure it was out and I left him very -- and I was so happy when he started crying.

That was -- seems like every time we had training, within the next week or two something would happen that we would have to use whenever -- whatever training we've just finished.

KAREN: Well, that's good timing.

WILLA: Yeah.

KAREN: So was that the first baby you delivered?

WILLA: No. I'd end up calling mama. And she was kind of there. As much as she could, she'd let us try to do whatever we can, but she was there kind of as our backup.

And for my youngest one, Rita was there and we ended up calling mama, and mama came in. Delivered her granddaughter.