![]() ![]() The facilitator, Dianca Sierra Vega, handed out cards, each with a different source of aggravation written on it. The session’s topic was common irritations during pregnancy. “They are empowered, they are involved in their care.” ![]() “So they are taking care of their own health, right then,” Zorrilla said. Before taking a seat, the women weighed themselves, measured their blood pressure with a monitor, and reported their results to a nurse. Hurricane Maria disrupted many things on the island, and the program was on hiatus, but Zorrilla is restarting the sessions and thinks they can be adapted to teach hurricane preparedness.Īt a recent appointment, nine pregnant women - each with her partner, mother, friend, or other support person in tow - filed into a small room in the hospital. The model, called “Centering Pregnancy,” relies on group prenatal appointments, rather than one-on-ones. About six years ago, for the first time in Puerto Rico, she introduced an untraditional approach to caring for women with risky pregnancies. Zorrilla works at the main public hospital in San Juan and is the principal investigator at the Maternal-Infant Studies Center. Zorrilla introduced the model to care for women with high-risk pregnancies, but plans to add hurricane preparedness to the curriculum. “But for these women, it was a stressful situation.” Facilitator Dianca Sierra Vega and physician Carmen Zorrilla lead group prenatal sessions in San Juan. Obstetrician and gynecologist Carmen Zorrilla said she heard several stories about births like Raúl Leandro’s. It’s her son’s favorite thing in the world, Molina says. The bobcat in question was not a large cat, but the front loader Malavé had used to clear the roads after the storm. Now 1 ½, he squirmed in his father’s arms on a recent sunny day in Cidra, pointing into the lush jungle that grows just beyond the family’s hilltop house. After a brief labor, Raúl Leandro was born healthy. “I yelled from fear.”īut this is a happy story. “I was yelling out of fear, I wasn’t yelling because of pain,” she said. Nearby, the emergency generator roared, another reminder of the chaos outside. Molina didn’t have her medical file on hand and couldn’t answer the assembled team’s questions about her pregnancy. Through the grapevine, they heard an obstetrician lived in the neighborhood and knocked on his door. Someone fetched a pediatrician cousin of Malavé’s. There were no phones - no communication - but a doula they’d worked with lived nearby and she came over. “I never even considered giving birth at home.” “I was thinking, ‘Wow, I did not prepare for this,’ ” she recalled. There, they stopped at Molina’s mother’s house, where Molina’s water broke. ![]() Unable to find lodging nearby to wait it out, she and her husband drove home to Cidra. The hospital was handling only emergencies, and Molina wasn’t quite ready to give birth. The facility was shrouded in darkness, and nurses rushed about with rolled-up pants and sleeves because the air conditioning had gone with the power. The elevator was damaged, so she had to climb the stairs to the maternity ward. The hospital stood near the shore, and they found the facility full of sand and broken glass. The trip to San Juan took twice as long as usual because the roads were such a mess. “So at least the hospitals would be accessible if an emergency occurred,” she said.įive days after the storm, Molina started having contractions. But just in case, her husband, Raúl Malavé Cotto, who owns a landscaping business, started clearing debris with a front loader. She planned to deliver in a hospital in San Juan, about 45 minutes away - the storm cleanup would be done by then, she figured. In her town of Cidra, downed trees and electric lines made roads impassable after the storm. Yahaira Molina Perez was eight months pregnant when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017. ![]()
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