In IP communities, program seeks to change mindset on health, birth
By Frinston Lim, Inquirer.net
When then 14-year-old Mary Ann Mandesi gave birth to her eldest inside her house in Barangay New La Union here, she was in excruciating pain for 24 hours. It was the longest day of her life.
She thought she would not see her firstborn. “I labored for almost a day,” the T’boli woman, now 34, recalled. A hilot (traditional midwife) assisted the birth. Her child was born with Down syndrome.
The harrowing experience prompted Mandesi to decide against having another child for more than a decade.
Her second child came when Mandesi was 28, and again, in spite of her brush with death during the first, the young mother gave birth at home.