Mother's Day at LifeSpring

You hear them before you see them. The clank-clank-clanking of little bells and the uncertain flutter of tiny feet.

It is traditional for babies here to be adorned with anklets around both feet, decorated with little bells. Little princesses, they look like.

The hospital waiting room was filled with the jingle of dozens of these anklets, as families came to celebrate Mother's Day at our hospital. In honor of the occasion, we had a health camp and offered free antenatal care checkups by our doctors.

LifeSpring's Mother's Day health fair tradition stems back to three years ago, when we had our first health fair at Moula Ali Hospital. Spearheaded by our amazing intern Sarah, the event was an all-day affair where all of our friends were involved. Tyler was event photographer and helped out with decorations. John took family portraits, which we printed on the spot, branded with a LifeSpring sticker, and gave to our customers (for many of whom, this is their one printed baby photograph. In fact, when I went to one of our communities a week ago, a woman excitedly brought me to her living room to show me her photo prominently displayed from that Mother's Day!) Eleonora, Theresa, and Aparna all helped out too.

It was exhausting, but amazingly fun. Doctors provided free antenatal care checkups, and pharmacies provided free iron and calcium pills (and held a raffle for diapers). We had health stations set up to check blood pressure and weight, distribute educational material on women's health, and a kid's play station. For some pictures, see here (thanks John!)

This year's Mother's Day was just as festive. It focused on educating key decision-makers how best to decide where to go for delivery and involved tours of the hospital. I actually wrote a short piece about it in the Global Health Blog, a project of PubHealth.org and run by Sarah Arnquist (yes, the same intern who spearheaded the first Mother's Day event!): see here.