EBB 283 - How Colonialism, Environmental Instability, and Politics Impact Birth in Puerto Rico with EBB Instructors, Tania Silva-Meléndez and Tamara Trinidad-González, CPM

Evidence Based Birth®

Rebecca Dekker

Pregnancy, Health & Fitness, Childbirth, Parenting, Birth, Medicine, Kids & Family, Doula, Obstetrician, Midwife

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today's podcast, I talk with Tania Silva Meléndez and Tamara Trinidad González, CPM, birth workers and Evidence Based Birth®

Instructors about giving birth and midwifery care in Puerto Rico.

Tania Silva Meléndez is a certified birth, postpartum, and abortion doula serving families in Puerto Rico since 2009. She's also a certified childbirth educator and breastfeeding/chestfeeding educator and counselor. She is the general coordinator of the team of Caderamen, a nonprofit community-based organization that works towards reducing inequalities in reproductive care, and she also supports Alimentación Segura Infantil, a community-based organization born after the impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 to support breastfeeding and chestfeeding families in their lactation journeys, help them relactate their children when needed. Tania is also a human rights activist and advocate in her community and part of the Observatorio de Violencia Obstétrica in Puerto Rico and Las Mingas de Aborto, an abortion doula collective that offers free support in Puerto Rico.

Tamara Trinidad González, CPM, is a community parteira/midwife, perinatal educator and herbalist born and raised in Puerto Rico. Tamara is a mother of two children who were born at home with midwives and has been actively involved in birth work for 10 years. She holds a Master of Science in midwifery with foundations in botanical medicine from Bastyr University and is a certified professional midwife. Her midwifery and herbal practice is called Semilla Creciente, Midwifery & Herbalism.

In this episode, Tania and Tamara have a very candid conversation about the realities of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care in Puerto Rico. They speak to how Puerto Rico’s birth landscape has been negatively impacted by the island’s history of colonialism, economic crisis’, environmental changes, and changes in political power. This has culminated in a system with far too few midwives and obstetricians, as well as high surgical birth rates, low VBAC rates, high prematurity rates, and more. Both Tania and Tamara educate our listeners on these issues but also raise awareness to the community organizations who have the trust of the pregnant and postpartum families they serve and the work being done to better support the families of Puerto Rico.

If you are interested in joining with Tania and Tamara and volunteering your time or skills to help them reform the maternal health system in Puerto Rico, they are currently looking for volunteers with experience in law, public relations, funding, data collection, research, and writing. OR if you have resources, or access to connections that could help fund their work, please email [email protected].

Resources:

Read about the history of Puerto Rico:

· How to hide an empire by Daniel Immerwahr

· Puerto Rico: What everyone needs to know by Jorge Duany

· Learn more about Caderamen, a nonprofit organization that has a service program that is called SePARE, which offers education and doula services, midwifery services and naturopathic medicine services, social workers, mental health by clicking here.

· Learn more about the Asociación de Parteras of Puerto Rico here.

· Learn more about Alimentación Segura Infantil, a community-based organization born after the impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 to support breastfeeding and chestfeeding families in their lactation journeys by clicking here.

· Learn more about Observatorio de Violencia Obstétrica in Puerto Rico here.

· Learn more about Las Mingas de Aborto, an abortion doula collective that offers free support in Puerto Rico here.

Check out the work by Puerto Rican journalist Biana Graulau here: https://www.youtube.com/@BiancaGraulau/videos

If you would like to read a transcript of this episode in Spanish, please visit the blog post here or you can watch the captions in Spanish on YouTube.

For more information and news about Evidence Based Birth®, visit www.ebbirth.com.

Want to get involved at EBB?

Check out our Professional Membership (including scholarship options) here
Find an EBB Instructor here
Click here to learn more about the Evidence Based Birth® Childbirth Class

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi everyone and bienbieniros on today's podcast we're going to talk with
0:04.3	Tanya Silva Melendez and tomorrow Trinidad Gonzalez birth workers and evidence-based
0:10.4	birth instructors about giving birth and midwifree care in Puerto Rico.
0:14.9	Welcome to the Evidence Space Birth podcast. My name is Rebecca Decker and I'm a nurse with my
0:19.9	PhD and the founder of Evidence Basedberg.
0:23.0	Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information
0:27.0	into the hands of families and professionals around the world.
0:31.0	As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. See Eviebirth.com
0:36.1	slash disclaimer for more details.
0:38.6	Hi everyone welcome to today's episode of the evidence-based birth
0:43.8	podcast this is a very important episode with Tanya and Tamara. Before we get
0:49.1	started I want to let you know that there will be discussion of
0:52.3	obstetric violence and colonialism.
0:55.0	If there are any other content notices,
0:57.0	they will be detailed in the show notes for this episode.
1:00.2	If you would like to read a transcript of this episode in Spanish,
1:03.4	please visit the link in the show notes or you can watch the captions in Spanish on YouTube.
1:08.2	If you see the layer a transcription of this episode in Espisorio in Espa
1:12.0	in Espais Espa in the
1:13.4	last notes in the program,
1:15.4	O state can see the softirelos in
1:17.6	in Espa in YouTube.
	...

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