CNN Hero tells moms not to give up on kids

BAGUIO CITY—On Jan. 7, 1999, Julia Segnaken Alcos went to Sta. Scholastica Village in Baguio City to seek a friend in giving birth to her youngest child.

But her friend, Filipino-American midwife Robin Lim, advised her that the baby girl in her womb was facing the wrong way, making childbirth difficult.

“I was told that it was a breech baby. I still wanted a natural childbirth. They helped me remove my clothes to get ready. When I went to the toilet, the baby’s feet popped out. And when I rushed out, that was when the baby sprung out,” Alcos said.

However, her baby was not breathing.

Lim immediately asked Alcos to stroke her baby’s cheeks and to repeatedly say, “I love you,” while the midwife revived the newborn child. Then the baby started to breathe.

Lim, the 2011 CNN Hero of the Year, described Alcos’ newborn as a “miracle baby.”

The baby girl was christened Natsuki. Now 13 years old, she reunited with Lim here last week, when the Indonesia-based midwife returned to the summer capital for a visit.

Natsuki said the story of how two mothers—her own and Lim—fought to keep her alive during the critical moments of her birth had inspired her to respect and honor all mothers.

“For me, every day is Mother’s Day. Being a good child is the best gift that I can give my mother,” Natsuki said on Tuesday, when she joined Lim and other people in watching “Guerrilla Midwife,” a movie about Lim’s life at the Victor Oteyza Community Art Space (Vocas) here.

Lim, known in Indonesia as “Ibu Robin” (Mother Robin), served Baguio residents from out of a relative’s house in Sta. Scholastica Village. Lim stayed at Sta. Scholastica from 1998 to 1999 with her husband and three of their children.

At the gathering here on Tuesday, Lim said Natsuki is the living testament to the virtues of motherhood.

“Don’t give up on your babies,” she said.

Lim said she heard different stories about motherhood and the struggles of childbirth after spending 20 years running the Yayasan Bumi Sehat (Healthy Mother Earth Foundation) clinic in Ubud village in Bali, Indonesia.

Lim’s clinic serves poor Indonesian mothers who cannot afford prenatal care and who are occasionally prevented from taking their newborn babies home until they settle their hospital bills.

She advocates traditional health care that is affordable and accessible to people, especially the poor.

Lim told the story of a teenager, who was raped and impregnated by a soldier in Aceh. The girl almost threw away her newborn baby out of anguish, she said, but the midwife managed to calm her down by embracing both mother and child.

“She cried for 15 minutes, and after that, she looked at the baby’s eyes, and said, ‘She looks like my mother.’ From then on, [she learned to] love her [baby] so much,” Lim said.

She said children who want to celebrate a meaningful Mother’s Day could support projects dedicated to mothers and women that help improve their health and their self-esteem.

“We should shower our mothers with good food and love. Love has nutritional value,” Lim said.

She said: “Every day, 981 women die from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. That’s shocking when you realize that these are women in the prime of their lives. [They are] not sickly people, but relatively young and usually poor people. They are dying mainly from malnutrition, which causes birth complications.”

“We cannot talk about improving health care unless we properly feed people,” she said, noting the importance of nutritious food, like organic vegetables and red rice, especially to breastfeeding mothers.

“[Breastfeeding] is important, it can [sustain] life,” she said.