The Sisterhood mum

I, like most people spend my free time binge watching on Netflix and recently I have been really in to documentaries.

This is a recommendation and no, I don’t work for Netflix and have not been asked to promote this, this is purely something I have watched and it’s been so powerful a watch that I must share.

“Motherland” is a documentary by Ramona S. Diaz focusing on the worlds busies maternity unit in Manila. I was drawn to this as my husband is half Filipino with my mother-in-law being from Manila.

The programme opens with a scene we have all seen before, heavily pregnant ladies in labour being helped into the local hospital then inside it becomes sometime I have not experienced before.

As the ladies enter, they are then placed on a bed with stirrups, not unusual but the bed is one of a long line of beds. Each filled with a woman being examined, side by side. No privacy.

If they are deemed ready to give birth they are placed two to a bed, labouring quietly till they are ready to push. Some giving birth next to the stranger they have been placed next too.

Each women is referred as “mother” as too many pass through for names to be remembered; instead they have a number so they can be found and matched with their babies.

They wear tube tops that substitute expensive incubators, breast feed each other children if needed and provide support that outshines all the shocks.

This is what got me, the fact these women who have nothing – they find each other. Providing much needed support when their husbands can’t visit due to not being able to afford the travel. Making each other laugh when you think there isn’t much to laugh about.

It’s a real sisterhood; in those days that they are in there, they are family. They share details of their lives outside, joking about how they can’t stop having kids because the husband always wants sex and gossiping about life inside the unit. It seems that this is what the document is really about.

I can’t tell you the names of the women I shared a ward with after having my children, we stared at each other but rarely communicated. Seeing this document made me see that we really have stepped away from “community living”.

These women bonded on shared beds, shared breast milk and we didn’t even exchange our new children’s names.

The women never felt alone, when they cried the mothers gathered round and helped dry the tears and in our wards we cried silent tears of fear that someone may find out we were completely overwhelmed by this new situation.

Yes, our hospitals are better, cleaner and well stocked with every resource we need but we are still extremely “British” with keeping ourselves to ourselves and not wanting to be a worry to others.

We could learn a few things from those Filipina mothers. Live, laugh and love...yes clique but even in these horrid over crowded hospitals they are smiling, laughing and helping each other see the brighter side of life.

It’s the one thing I really took from this.

Can you try something for me? Next time you see a mother having a hard time...go over and try and make her laugh. See what happens, you might have just made her day.

First published on the Selfishmother blogazine