Oral History Project

My Individual Project

One of the skills we focused on in this class was effective interviewing. Properly done interviews can be extremely effective at getting different or new perspectives, histories, and knowledge that can only be transmitted orally.  In Nicaragua, I hope to interview as many women as possible from the clinic or Casa Materna on their experience of giving birth. The goal will be to evoke oral histories that will help me to understand their experiences and emotions pre- and postpartum. My plan is to build a set of questions based on a number of the anthropological and psychological studies readings related to this topic that I have done this term to better prepare me. Some books that have particularly influenced my thinking about this project have been Birth in Four Cultures: A Cross-cultural Investigation of Childbirth by Brigitte Jordan and The Darkest Days of My Life: Stories of Postpartum Depression by Natasha Mauthner. I will ask the women to record our interviews using a tape recorder to accomplish two goals. The first is that the interviews will likely be in Spanish and without a translator and so I am sure that there will be parts I will want to listen to again. The second goal is that I am not sure where this oral history gathering is going to take me and so having records of the conversations will give me flexibility later on. I am hopeful that it will shape into a larger project as I am so interested in this area from an anthropological standpoint. That being said, I think that there is a lot value in leaving the research to give me direction and so I am trying to prepare as much as possible for the story collection phase, and leave the rest for later. One of my concerns is that I am worried about being trusted enough by the women, particularly as a young gringa without any kids herself only there for fifteen days, to openly share. Nevertheless, the extremely positive experience at the Women's Resource Center has left me optimistic that there will be a way to participate in that sharing. The experience also revealed that the questions Leah, Kate and I came up with for our group project might be an excellent place to start to effectively begin a conversation about the (lack of) emotional support women have before and after giving birth.

Calling For Help from Nicaragua: My First Principle Informants

Another step in my process of preparation was to speak with several scholars or people with much more experience than I with the region, oral history, maternal mental health, and more. I therefore talked informally with Dr. Bracken, Dr. Brack, Professor Sienna Craig and hopefully Professor Sergei Kan about the project and asked for advice. In a slightly more formal capacity, I Skype called with Eva and Hugo, two volunteer coordinators with Bridges to Community, to ask about post-partum mental health, maternal health, and the possibility of doing the project during our time in Siuna. I recorded both calls, considering both to by first principle informants.

The calls were conducted on two different days and are in Spanish. It is important to note that my reflections and informal transcriptions are translated to English.

 

On November 4th, 2016 I Skyped with Hugo Gonzalez from Bridges to Community in Nicaragua. Hugo grew up in Siuna and is the International Volunteer Coordinator. He will be with our Community Health team and so I asked him mainly questions about the possibility of talking with the women about their pregnancies and giving birth and explaining the project. He reassured me that it would be very possible to talk with a midwife about the mental health of women during the birthing experience. It was interesting to reflect upon the different perspectives of birth that Eva and Hugo hold. While Eva had learned about postpartum depression and identified the many ways she suspects women struggle emotionally pre and post partum, Hugo chuckled at the idea of postpartum depression and said that in Nicaragua children are a gift from God and so women are extremely grateful and happy after giving birth. From this part of our conversation, I think it will be valuable to talk with men, particularly the husbands of the mothers I am able to receive oral histories from, about the experience of childbirth. Assuming their perspectives are as contrasting as those of Eva and Hugo, I think the additional insight will help to understand the postpartum experience of women and impacting forces on their mental health.

Here is an excerpt related to the final project of my group that I think you will find particularly interesting, but I encourage you to listen to the whole interview:

Do midwives talk with the women just about the physical state of the mothers, their health, and their babies? Or do they also talk about their emotions? 

No, no, they talk about general things as well. They are mothers and so they will give and tell their personal experiences to others.

 

On November 8th, 2016 I Skyped with Eva from Bridges to Community in Nicaragua to ask about the experience of birth and maternal mental health. I really appreciated her thoughtfulness and the detail that she shared with me. On the subject of postpartum depression, she mentioned that she had heard of it but that no facts or statistics exist. She said that given the environment of birth in Nicaragua (with young girls having multiple children due to poor sexual education for kids, and not having enough resources to provide for any of the children), she suspects that many women must suffer from postpartum depression. Eva talked about the way most women find support in their families. Women will learn everything they know about taking care of their children and giving birth from their mother and mother in law. She talked about how women will encourage mothers before and after they give birth by comforting them and saying things like "I know you are worried but it's all okay" and making suggestions such as going to community health centers and having confidence in the community. This affirmed my question about the mental and emotional support mothers are getting and I look forward to hearing oral histories from more women about this component of their experiences.

Here is the key excerpt that I think you will find particularly interesting, but I encourage you to listen to the whole interview as Eva was so helpful particularly addressing PPD and the maternal situation in Nicaragua:

I am particularly interested in the experience of a woman after she gives birth because here it is very common to have postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression [translated into Spanish]? Well, first of all, after women give birth, they give birth control. But in reality, in Nicaragua, once a woman gives birth, she goes to her house and her family sees how she is doing, how she is taking care of the baby, if she's okay... but in reality, this is more the job of the family than of the doctor or the Ministry of Health. Therefore there is no influence to diagnose/ identify which women have postpartum depression. But I can imagine that there are some. Especially when we look at the societal/ environmental factors... if she has the resources to raise the child, if she has a place to be with the baby, if she can give the baby a place of dignity... but in reality there is no specific/ accurate way to identify which women have postpartum depression. I imagine/ suppose that there are as in this region, well, the same in the whole country, there are many girls that are giving birth and at ages 13 and 14 are mothers. Especially as they don't have any idea what it means to raise a child, because it's a child trying to raise another child. That's the problem in this region and in many areas of the country. There is very little sexual education for girls. We can also talk about the social factors. We live in a machismo culture and so at 16/18 years old, people are asking why you aren't married or why you don't have kids. And so we have to live with those commentaries. But in reality, we don't have any real facts or numbers.