22-11
If having a real person act
out childbirth is not culturally
acceptable in your area, try using
the cardboard ‘birth box’ instead.
To make the demonstration
more lifelike, you can put the box
on a cot, and have a person lie
underneath.
The person underneath can push
on the box to show contractions of
the womb, and make panting and
groaning sounds and talk as the
‘woman’ gives birth.
A teaching aid to help health workers and mothers see the position of the baby
inside the womb was invented by Pablo Chavez, the village health worker who has
done some of the drawings for this book.
Pablo made a cardboard figure
of a woman’s body, with a window
plastic
sheet
flexibaby
cut out to show the inside of the
womb. This he covered with a clean
piece of old X-ray film to form a
transparent pocket.
He also made a flexible baby
model from pieces of cardboard and
some rivets.
The ‘flexibaby’ can be placed in
the ‘womb’ in any position, and
then used to demonstrate the
different presentations of birth
(head first, butt first, foot or
hand, etc.).
Another way to show the
different birth positions is to
use a real baby together with
a drawing of a woman giving
birth. A mother holds her
baby in front of the picture,
and shows how it would be
delivered in various positions.
(See also p. 12-7.)