Every Mother Counts

Recently I started to follow Christy Turlington Burns on twitter.  She was and always has been one of my favorite models.  I always found something about her very appealing.  It doesn’t hurt that she is married to the cutie pie Edward Burns.  She is one of the best people to work with in the business and is someone I would love to share a cup of coffee with.  She holds my utmost respect for her work as an activist and humanitarian.  Her work with CARE has impressed me but I am not surprised as this is something she learned from her own mother who inspired her to make a difference.

It shows that our own actions and what we care about life does have an impact on our own children.  It is with CARE that Christy began to visit Africa and she became the advocate for Maternal Health.  She has also been an ambassador for RED. Christy had an unexpected complication-postpartum hemorrhage after the birth of her first child.  She was lucky to have the care that saved her.  It was then she started to think of the women in the world and their experiences with childbirth.  Many of these complications can not be seen in advance, but they can be prevented.

Postpartum hemorrhage ( PPH) is the leading cause of maternal deaths in the world.

I was also one of those women who had complications after the birth of my first child.  The pregnancy was fine, the delivery was long and she was a big baby.  This caused stress on my uterus which cause the complications.  Postpartum Hemorrage is a dangerous situation for many women.  I live here in Canada and the medical treatment I received corrected the situation and I was lucky.  There are many reasons for this to happen and for me it was the size of my baby.  My uterus was done after she was born and did not want to contract.

I was only told a few days later what had happened and I wondered why when I looked in the mirror I was so pale.  I asked everyone if women who delivered were supposed to look like this?  I looked ghostly.  My husband told me on the second day how very scary the situation was and that after this there would be no more babies.  Well as you can see from the picture we had three more with zero complications and there were all big babies.

I honestly thought this was something that women died from in my grandmothers time but sadly it’s still happening.
A woman dies every 90 seconds from complications of pregnancy. 90% of deaths are preventable.  Let me repeat that one more time because the statistics are just unbelievable but they are true.

A woman dies every 90 seconds from complications of pregnancy. 90% of deaths are preventable.  This is happening all over the world and even here in Canada.  I know from my own experiences that I did not think it could.  In Canada the maternal mortality rate is 1 in 11000.  That is still way too high for me for our own country.

If you would like to see No Woman No Cry the film it is going to be on Oprah’s OWN network this Saturday May 7th.  The Canadian public premiere for the film will be in Toronto on May 13th and you can find that information here MRC Global Health No Woman No Cry Premiere.

What can we do about this?  Along with her film debut Christy launched the website Every Mother Counts.

In honor of Mother’s day please visit Every Mother Counts and see what you can do to help. Tell a story about yourself, your mom or someone who you know made a difference and in the sharing of your own story you are making a difference to one person somewhere in the world.

It’s not just about the money to be raised, it about awareness.  We all need to be aware and use our voices to make a difference.  In this day and age that something so devastating is still happening and what’s worse that it can be prevented in 90% of the cases is something as moms and as women we should all strive to change.

The message should be clear and simple.  No matter where they live, what their religion, skin color, lifestyle, or status.

Every Mother Counts.

Follow @everymomcounts on twitter and at http://www.facebook.com/everymothercounts