12/04/2025
A Mother Caught Between Borders
Before anything else, Rose was a mother holding her newborn close, still aching from surgery, trying to get home. That should have been the whole story. A road. A baby. A homecoming.
But Haiti has become a place where even simple stories bend until they shatter.
Rose left her home because gang violence swallowed her neighborhood. More than 200,000 people have been pushed out, and pregnant women carry the heaviest fear. Many, like Rose, cross into the Dominican Republic dreaming of safety, a bed, a place with no gunshots or kidnappings.
Instead, they often find more danger. More than 250,000 Haitians have been deported, taken suddenly, often brutally. Pregnant women and postpartum mothers are specifically targeted.
Rose became one of them.
Two days after her C section, still bleeding, still unsteady, she climbed onto a motorcycle with her baby. She never reached her family. Authorities stopped the bike and pulled her away. Thankfully her infant stayed with her, but she was taken across the border and left on the Haitian side with no money, no papers, and only forty-eight hours postpartum. Eight more days passed as she tried to survive.
When she reached our MFH clinic in Montegrande, she was running a high fever and shaking. Her incision was swollen and two abscesses had formed. But even worse than that, was a smell that warned our midwives something had gone terribly wrong.
During the exam, they found gauze left behind after her birth. Infection had taken hold. Her body was losing the fight, and losing it fast.
Rose was rushed to Ste Therese Hospital where she received excellent treatment. And then we invited her to Kay Manman Yo, our maternal waiting home, where her healing began in earnest.
There, surrounded by steady hands and kind voices, she is regaining her strength. She eats well. She nurses her baby. She sleeps without fear. Community holds her like a mother holds a child.
She told us, “If I had not met the midwives, I would have died. I know it.”
Rose’s story is one mother’s story, and it reflects the reality women across Haiti face every day. More mothers are arriving at our clinics carrying fear, exhaustion, and impossible choices. Your support makes it possible for midwives to meet them with skilled care, safety, and dignity. As we enter our End of Year Campaign, we invite you to stand with families like Rose’s and help us continue this life-saving work. Together we deliver hope where it is needed most.
DONATE: https://midwivesforhaiti.org/donate-now/
