September News

Myself, Tuli & Granny Rose

As I am busy doing our volunteer roster for shifts to Helderberg Hospital over the next few months, I remember that it is a year ago since I did my very first roster as new manager of Bosom Buddies. What a year it has been for us all. Currently we have 19 active volunteers for Heldeberg Hospital and a further 3 who visit Macassar Day hospital. Another 4 women serve on the Babies Born Sleeping team, though on hold for now, they are ready to be called at a moment’s notice. A bunch of beautiful, inspirational and committed women. I cannot ask for a better team and am so grateful to every one of you.

What motivates someone to volunteer? Some of our volunteers have been with Bosom Buddies for longer than me, even Mel who retired as leader, is back as volunteer. Granny Rose is in the Bosom Buddies stock room packing bags and sorting donations every morning. I know our volunteers love Bosom Buddies, and what we do. We love to cuddle those newborns, to share in this very special time with the new moms and to feel that we are touching a life, making a difference in some small yet significant way.

Over the past few months I have told several stories of women we have met at the hospital. In all these women’s lives, we have had an important impact. I have no doubt that they will never forget Bosom Buddies, the woman who prayed for her and with her, for her baby. Who spoke to her about breastfeeding or birth control, who perhaps shared a story about her own children. Who planted that mustard seed of caring and Faith in this woman’s heart. I believe she will remember this and show this kindness in her own community, perhaps reach out to someone else in kindness, perhaps remember the peace that the prayer brought. Let’s not underestimate the power of prayer. So many women cry when we pray for them. I think it is such a relief for them to feel that here is someone who cares, someone praying for them only and wishing a beautiful life for their child. Our words are filled with ten-fold the worth through our prayer and faith. Whether we pray for a sick baby, a beautiful healthy baby, a mother in the midst of a difficult birth, imagine the value.

This month I would like my volunteers to know that I appreciate and cherish you, and I thank you. I know it is hard sometimes, draining and frustrating. I also feel angry and discouraged when I meet a 16-year-old girl having her second child, or a 34-year-old woman having her eighth child or the drug-addicted mom who doesn’t seem to care. I cry buckets of tears every time I dress a baby born sleeping. I feel my heart break when I see the tiny little prem babies full of tubes and dressings in the incubators. And I am so sorry for the moms labouring all alone, often not even speaking the same language of the nurses. But I would like to encourage you that you DO make a huge difference. These women will remember you, and all the stories we collect are used to teach other women. Every prayer, smile and gentle touch by you is exceptional and uplifting. Most of all – enjoy the cuddles, the newborn smells and precious time spent with the mothers.

Frances

The story of Agnes

Agnes is 34 years old but looks at least 10 years older. I met her this morning as she was leaving the hospital and asked for help with taxi fare. I had some time, so offered to give her a ride to her home. I believe this decision was God fated as I needed to hear her story and share it with you.

Agnes has given birth to her eighth baby on Saturday. The little boy was born premature at 8 months, but is healthy and will probably be able to go home in a few days’ time when he reaches 1.8kg. Her eldest daughter lives next door to her, is 20 years old and has 2 children of her own. The second eldest is 18, also with 2 kids. Yes, Agnes had her first baby at 14 years and for the past 20 years she has been pregnant and breastfeeding for most of those years. She is tiny, looks weatherbeaten and doesn’t weigh more than 40kg. She is not healthy and suffers from epileptic fits as well as stress. My answer to that was that I would also suffer from stress if I had 8 kids and no work, with a husband who doesn’t work either. Apparently they get the waste from Shoprite and that is what they live on. According to Agnes she has a good husband, who never beats her and yesterday he walked all the way to the hospital to bring her 4 nappies that he borrowed from his brother. Ages of the children: 20, 18, 13, 11, 6, 2, 9 months, newborn. Yes, Agnes has thought about sterilisation but there is just never the money or the means to get to the clinic. What affected me about her story is that the 11-year old boy has been in an accident. He was hit by a car driven by a button-smoking boy (according to Agnes) two weeks ago. He has been in the hospital at Tygerberg for the past 2 weeks and he hasn’t seen his mom even once. He has undergone two separate operations, she’s not sure what and must be so very scared and lonely. Agnes says he is a good, happy boy, doesn’t give them attitude and is always full of jokes and makes them laugh. She says the Sunday two weeks ago that he got run over a sadness befell their house and that night she had an epileptic fit. She is so worried about her boy and has no money to call the hospital to find out how he is doing. She came home today and left her newborn in another hospital to try to go and see her son.

As I dropped Agnes at her home (just a shack behind someone’s house), I met the other children shown in the picture. The 13-year-old daughter has to stay home to look after the little ones. She hasn’t been to school for quite a while. The 6-year old girl is supposed to be in grade 1, but there was no money for preschool or admission fees for the school. The little ones are crawling and walking without nappies, their bums and clothes as soiled as their little faces. But they’re smiling. They’re so happy to have their mommy home. Agnes is gentle and caring and I’m sure she does her best, but her arms are full, her body is hungry and sick and her eyes are tired.

I gave them the milk and bread that I had in my car after my morning shop. I gave Agnes some money to get to her son in the hospital. Tonight I mix tears with my spaghetti bolognese, because I know Agnes would so love to cook this meal for her family. I cry: “I am sorry, God, that just yesterday I complained that my house is too small. That this morning I stood in front of my full cupboard and said I have nothing to wear.” I cry for the little boy in hospital, afraid and alone, I cry for the two teenage girls with two children each. I cry for the 13-year old daughter looking after her siblings, her 6-year old sister, who will probably never go to school. And the three babies. But mostly I cry for Agnes and all the mothers just like her.

August News

On this Women’s Day and Women’s Month of 2011 Bosom Buddies honours our mothers. We share in the most special time in the lives of so many women and we hear wonderful, beautiful, inspiring life stories.

As we celebrate the 20000 women who marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on August 9, 1956, I wonder how far we have really come as women. Constitutionally and legally we have all the rights on paper and it is such a privilege to live in a country where human rights are respected and constitutionally enforced. But have we really come that far? The majority of women in our country don’t have the means to access these laws. Neither are they aware of them. Many are repressed, fearful and vulnerable. And the most vulnerable of these is the mother.

Consider the single mother trying to receive maintenance contributions from her children’s father. She earns R100 per day. Transport for her and her two children to work and school amounts to R55 per day. Going to the courts means a day off work, which is less R100 plus extra transport costs. Only to hear from the administrative clerks at court that her maintenance court order will take up to a year to enforce. And then in a year’s time, when the order is enforced and he refuses to pay, it will be more days off work spent in court. In the meantime, she has children to clothe and feed, school- and doctor’s fees to pay.

Consider the woman raped and impregnated by a police officer, too afraid to speak out and accuse this man at the same police station where he works with his friends. She seeks an abortion, only to be told that it’s too late. During her pregnancy she discovers that she is now HIV positive. She gives birth to a healthy son and names him Gift.

Consider the 40-year-old woman forced by her alcohol and drug-addicted husband to have her eighth child, because he needs the R225 per month per child government grant to support his habit. Her last baby is born with down’s syndrome, a special needs baby and an added burden to an already overwrought, overworked, poor and tired mother.

Consider the young mother who was told that it would ease labour pains to use tik (crystal meth) during the birth of her baby.

Consider the 16-year-old girl, pregnant and HIV positive. When asked whether they were educated about HIV and the use of condoms, she admits that what she believed was that you use condoms only if you sleep around, not if you have one stable boyfriend. She believed her boyfriend of 2 years was faithful.

These are all women we have met at our breastfeeding groups and in the hospital over the last few months. It begs the question this Women’s Day: do we really have reason to celebrate?

I don’t think so. I think we still have a long struggle ahead.

Our volunteers from Bosom Buddies meet 400 women per month. We bless them with a gift, love them without judgment and pray for them and their babies. It is a small start, but definitely not insignificant.

It does matter.

Remember the granny I mention in my previous blog? She is raising twin boys and had to give up her job in order to take care of them. I admire her love and dedication. She has since legally adopted the two boys and so the mother has no claim on them. This is important for the security of the boys, but also for the woman (and her husband) raising the two. They are giving them their all – all the love you and I can imagine that anyone will have for their own children and so much expense too, and the risk that maybe one day they can lose them is just agonizing. So the boys are now officially theirs, with all that entails.

Granny left the hospital with some gifts from Bosom Buddies, including a bucket with 10 organic cotton nappies. As we all know, disposable nappies are very expensive and also not great for the environment, so we thought it pertinent to rather give them cotton nappies as a gift, plus some etra clothes, blankets and products. Since they were premature, they stayed, with their granny, in the hospital for a few weeks. Our volunteers got to know them relatively well, as we do most of the moms who stay in the kangaroo room with their prem or sick babies. We spent many visits with them praying and just chatting.

We have received the following letter from magnificent granny:
(please bear in mind that she is of Muslim faith, and consider the power of prayer)

“Dear Mrs Frances (of Bosom Buddies)
I would like to sincerely thank you for the contribution for the twins. It has come in very handy. I just thought that morning, where would I get help for some nappies? The dear lord Jesus then sent you on my way with a bag filled with blessings. My husband and I really appreciate it. When I took the two children, I said God, please give me a mustard seed of faith, that which I cannot see, to raise these boys.

My prayer for you, the nurses and everyone who came along my way with these two innocent children, is that ‘God, when you bless others, do not pass these people. Come bless them with a wealth of blessings.’

The giver gets more than the receiver.

Thank you, thank you. God’s richest blessings.
Yours faithfully”

What we do DOES matter, CHANGES lives and plants that mustard seed of faith. Every touch, every smile, every blessing and prayer has the potential to save a life. Mind-blowing and awesome.

July News

I know it often seems that we are having a terrible time and that each visit to the hospital is wrought with emotion, pain and sadness but we visit new mothers, and that in itself is filled with joy and hope.


What I find the most incredible of all, is that these women, these mothers, are so overcome with love, awe and affection for their newborns. God and nature are such an incredible force that the love we all have for our babies is instant and overwhelming and pure.  But so is the anxiety and fear and anger when things go wrong.


When I meet people without children, it is hard to explain this wonderment and love to them. I know women who have adopted and their love is by no means any less than those of us who have ‘natural, biological’ kids. The only thing they don’t experience is the birth, whether by caesaerian or natural, and with it, that first few hours of getting to know the new baby, this human being that has for 9 months lived inside of you and is a WHOLE person. That’s incredible, indescribable, beautiful and frightening.


At Bosom Buddies we meet the mothers when they are in this space, when they have just experienced this, the most life-changing and life-affirming experience of their lives. What a powerful platform! We have such a great opportunity to minister and to love and to pray and to bless. Wow.


I have learnt so much in my time with Bosom Buddies. I am astonished by the strength of women, by how much we overcome and achieve in spite of circumstances. The women we meet at HH and Macassar are the poorest in our communities. Yet they are for the most part calm and cheerful and exceedingly loving and caring of their babies. They are open to meet and to chat with our volunteers and most of them welcome a prayer, thanking God for their little miracle.

Look at this woman in the picture. These twin boys were born on 2 July. They were born premature and are still very small, but they’re healthy and strong and they should be fine. It is a generally known fact that kangaroo care (skin-on-skin) is the absolute best for premies. They grow and develop better, they are nice and cosy and warm against their mother’s skin and it creates a womb-like feeling when they’re all cuddled up inside her clothes on her chest against her heart. The astonishing thing about this woman and these two boys is that she is not their mother. She is their granny and will be raising them as her own. She realised that it will be impossible for her daughter to care for these twins without leaving school and they decided that daughter should stay in school. She will have to stay in hospital, doing kangaroo care with the boys for quite a while, until the boys are big enough to go home. When I spoke to her and told her how much I admire her for sacrificing so much to raise her grandchildren and spend weeks in (a really not very comfortable) hospital, she looked at me like I’m the crazy one and said that she didn’t even consider otherwise. It is not a sacrifice! How blessed are they to have TWO boys to add to their family. She would do anything for them, anything at all. 
Love and dedication, seen on the faces of the maternity ward at Helderberg Hospital and Macassar clinic.

Please join us for our Women’s Day celebration, a brunch we will be hosting with School of Hope on Women’s day, 9 August. It is entitled “I am Woman, Being a woman in SA today” and will be interesting and enlightening. 

Pray constantly

Thankfully we have had a quiet week at HH so far. Calm visits to the ward with some bags left-over at the end, the nurses seem relaxed and chatty and the patients are well looked-after and content. Most importantly: no babies born sleeping. The hospital gave us statistics of approximately 8 to 10 stillbirths per month and so far we have experienced just that – about 2 per week. Last week was particularly bad with two in one day. Two such different experiences!

The first mother was in the overfull ward, sitting on a chair with newborns suckling on their moms all around. She sat in the corner, invisible in her misery in pain. Her sister was not allowed in the ward and was sitting outside on a bench, waiting for any news. Mom is called Julie and from Zimbabwe. This is her first baby, a baby boy born at full term, but something went wrong and he didn’t make it. She is married, 26 years old and was so excited about having this son. Julie asked me to dress her little boy in his going-home outfit – a vest, pants, babygro, little hat and blanket, all the brightest happiest yellow. She watched while I carefully dressed him and took some pictures. I pointed out to her all his perfect features: the flawless little fingers, the little button nose, the pouty mouth whilst she drank it in. It was heartbreakingly, intensely difficult. What I could say as I dressed him, is that his going-home outfit is just perfect, as he is now home with Jesus and he is so very very loved.

The second case was poles apart: The mother, Naheema, was very young, from Cape Town, very thin with no expression in her eyes. She got the last bed in the semi-private ward. She was very unemotional and uncommunicative, did not want to see the baby or have any pictures taken. I can’t judge her, because of the dark place she is in and we all react differently to grief, but I could clearly see that she is a drug addict just waiting to get out of there. I have since learnt that now, a week later, her baby’s little body is still there. Naheema conned the hospital staff by giving a false address, she arranged with an undertaker to fetch the baby but cancelled this as she left the hospital. God sent me to wrap baby boy in a blanket and put a little cap on and cry some tears over him. His mother has disappeared and is now wanted by the police.

As everywhere in the world, drugs are a huge problem. In the Cape we struggle with crystal meth (Tik). The rumours are incredible. Just this morning we met a beautiful 22-year-old mom with her gorgeous baby girl, Labiba. Mom told me and the doctor that her cousin told her that Tik will help with labour pains, so she smoked it last night while in labour. Labiba is very sleepy and struggling to breastfeed and so when asked how often she smoked Tik in the pregnancy, the mom said just now and then after the eighth month. She is very adamant that she will never do it again. When I meet these mothers, I make sure they understand that if they feel overwhelmed by motherhood, if they feel they can’t cope, there is help. I am so aware of babies in our area being abandoned and I try my best to make the women understand that there are places they can go for help, that their baby is loved and precious and even she, the mother, is loved and special.

Doctors, nurses, social workers and NGO’s like ours work tirelessly and constantly to save these women and their babies. Unfortunately, often, they fall through the cracks and soon enough revert back to their old ways of drug use, prostitution and alcoholism. And sadly, the thought of what becomes of these babies is unbearable, which is why we just work harder, speak louder, love stronger and pray constantly.

June News

There is a moment, a period of a few hours after the birth of a baby that is extremely unique. The mother and baby are surrounded by an invisible bond- a cloud of adoration and devotion between mother and baby. I have attended some difficult births and without exception the only concern of the mother is for her baby. One such mother took her baby on her chest after she had a long, difficult labour and delivery and her first words to her baby was “sorry baby, sorry, sorry. I have met mothers giving birth to their tenth or more babies that have this same look of reverence when they look at their newborns as the mother of a first child. This is by far the best part of doing what we do, to share in this, to meet these women at this vulnerable, gentle time, to encourage them and congratulate them.

I have often wondered if any of the moms we meet at Helderberg Hospital or Macassar end up abandoning their babies. We have all heard of the dreadful statistics of abandoned babies in the Cape. In 2010 over 450 babies were abandoned in and around Cape Town. I truly hope that none of ‘our’ moms end up abandoning their babies. I genuinely believe that we do make a difference, that our prayer and blessing and gift gives the mother hope and conveys to the mother that her baby is special and that she is special.

There are many theories and lots of debate surrounding this issue of abandoned babies. To me it is simple. The mother is isolated and desperate. She is probably suffering from post-partum depression. She is most likely in an abusive relationship. She is almost certainly very poor and can see no other solution. She is doubtless uneducated and unempowered. She might be HIV positive and the baby could be a result of rape or incest. I can only imagine the hours leading up to the abandonment and the mom’s despair and anguish that will lead her to take this step. My point is that I cannot imagine any of the women I have met at either of ‘our’ local hospitals will reach this point, because at the time we meet them they are looking at their babies with such awe, amazed at their own strength and overwhelmed by love.

I realise that I sound naïve in thinking that the women we meet are different. Yes, they are different, but only because they have us. We pray for them and plant a seed of love and compassion, and we ensure that no baby leaves the hospital without clothes and being snugly wrapped in a blanket. No mom leaves without hygiene products, she can sit in the taxi or walk down the hill with her dignity in tact. After this we encourage them to come to us for breastfeeding advice and to learn to sew and get basic business training. Maybe it’s a drop in a bucket, but for one, two or a hundred women and babies it has made a difference. And that is worth it.

Also, huge thanks to Adventure Bootcamp Team from Somerset West who hosted a Beach Booty day for us on Strand Beach and raised R1350. Thanks Girls!!!