Recently the Maternity Unit at Port Moresby General closed 70 of its 100 beds indefinitely and without warning “for renovations” and suggested that women make alternative arrangements.

The Maternity Unit births an average of 100 babies a week or a baby every 2 hours.

One of our security men and his wife are due to have a baby and last week at 11pm he knocked on my door to tell me his wife was in labour and the Taxi wouldn’t come to where they live which is way out of town. So I took them in my van to the hospital. I didn’t think she was in actual labour but I couldn’t take the chance of her having a baby where she lives.

When we got there dad was only allowed to take her into the unit and not stay but could return at 2pm the next day during visiting hours. They did not allow a support person for the mother, nor was any doctor available.

As I waited at the van another Ute pulled up with a lady in the back giving birth. I couldn’t get her out of the truck and then her waters broke. She then calmly pushed out a wee scrap of a baby girl. My gloves were two sandwich bags and her sheet was what our babies in the Children’s Program sit on so I knew it was clean. I wrapped this baby in the father’s T-shirt turned inside out for warmth. I then wrote birth details on a tissue and pinned it to mums dress. Dad ran and got a wobbly wheelchair with a flat tyre and we raced mum cuddling the baby (still attached to its placenta!) into the ward.

This lady began bleeding lots and with no staff there, I went into midwife mode demanding the things I needed to arrest the bleeding, birthed the placenta, put the baby in mum’s arms, and said what I say to every baby “Hello baby. Jesus loves you” and I left.

I thought I was at the hospital for our security man’s child, but God had other plans, positioning me to help this other woman (I still don’t know her name) who may have died without attendant care.

I love the opportunities that working with the Gateway Children’s Fund gives me to show people God’s goodness.