BALTIMORE — Someday, Henry's mother, Me Me, will tell him of the 9,000-mile journey that brought his family from Burma to this complex of squat, red-brick apartment buildings in Maryland.
For now, he slumbers in an infant car seat, canopy drawn low, oblivious to the women seated around him.
Like his mother, they are refugees from Burma, also known as Myanmar and governed for more than 20 years by a military regime. And like his mother, they are Chin, a pro-democracy ethnic and religious minority persecuted for practicing Christianity in a country that's 90% Buddhist.
Motherhood is what brings them together this muggy spring afternoon. Members of a pregnancy support group organized by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) — whose mission for nearly 80 years has been to help refugees rebuild their lives — they have been meeting weekly in one another's apartments to learn about pregnancy and baby care, U.S.-style.
They have been in the USA less than a year and speak little English.
"They come to this country a little shell-shocked with all the technology," says Shirley Van Zandt, director of the birth-companions program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. Van Zandt's program trains nursing students who serve as instructors for the pregnancy support groups.
And, besides their immediate family, they come here alone.
"Traditionally, many of these women would have been supported in their pregnancies by their mothers or female relatives," says Adrienne Atlee, health program manager in the Baltimore office of the IRC, which resettled them.
Their mothers are unable to flee Burma into neighboring Thailand or Malaysia as the daughters did, says Bob Carey, vice president of migration and refugee resettlement at the IRC.
The transplanted women, strangers at first, have formed their own support system, Atlee says, a "profound benefit" of the group.
Me, who'll be 20 in June, and her husband, Za Za, lived in Malaysia for more than two years before emigrating to the USA six months ago.
She delivered their older son, who's nearly 3, in a Malaysian hospital. Her husband wasn't allowed in the delivery room, and she couldn't ask any questions because of the language barrier.
Henry Ram Thung Lian Za was born at Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital, with his father, an interpreter and a labor companion, by his mother's side.
Appropriately enough, the topic for today's workshop is baby care. "Hopefully, some of you can help me out here," says Ashly Higgins, an aspiring midwife who's graduating this month with a bachelor's degree in nursing from Hopkins.
Higgins sits on the floor, her laptop resting atop a breast pump box. Ja Rawng, who emigrated from Burma five years ago to study business and psychology at the University of Alabama, serves as interpreter. Host Vung Za Don, 23, due to deliver her second son this summer, kneels on the floor, while David, her 22-month-old firstborn, scampers in and out of the room.
As the women watch intently, Higgins covers the basics: car seats, well-baby checkups, baby-proofing the home, diapers — newborns can go through 70 a week — digital thermometers. When asked about the best place to insert a thermometer, Higgins advises, "If you use the bottom, don't go too far or push too hard," and Rawng's interpretation evokes laughter.
Higgins turns to breastfeeding. An illustration on her laptop shows how to make sure the baby is latched onto the breast well.
Both Henry's mother and Hlawn Kim, 27, mother of 1-month-old Joseph, delivered via cesarean section, and Higgins notes that they might not want to hold their baby against their fresh incisions.
Instead, she recommends they try the "football hold," in which the mother holds the baby to her side, like a quarterback running down the field toward a touchdown.
Even if the women spoke fluent English, though, this bit of advice would have flummoxed them. In Burma, football refers to soccer. You don't hold the ball, you kick it. But Rawng the interpreter clarified the term.
Higgins explains how the breast pump works and asks whether any of the women would like to take it home. Me, who, like the others, has never seen such a thing, says she'll think about it.
After the workshop, the women linger in Don's neat living room. Atlee presents each with a gift — diapers and baby wipes wrapped in a blanket. Don serves plates of sticky rice and cups of green tea with milk and sugar.
Soon, Atlee says, the IRC will launch a round of prenatal workshops for Bhutanese refugees who resettled in Baltimore from camps in Nepal — another group of strangers bonding over motherhood far from their motherland.
Source : www.usatoday.com
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