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Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP
An Indian woman plays with her child at the doorway of her house ahead of Mother's Day, in Allahabad, India, May 6. Mother's Day will be celebrated on May 13.
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Janani Express rushes expectant mothers to needed maternity care
Vivek Prakash / Reuters
Suman, a 25-year-old pregnant woman, lies on an examination table as a nurse places her hands on her stomach during a check up at a community health center in the remote village of Chharchh, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Vivek Prakash / Reuters
Anguri, a 26-year-old pregnant woman in labor, lies on a bench inside a maternity ambulance as her relatives accompany her to a community health center in a rural area near the remote village of Chharchh, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
In rural Madhya Pradesh, an innovative free maternity ambulance service called "Janani Express", which runs in partnership between the state government and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), is trying to increase the number of babies born in clinics where proper care can be provided to the mothers and newborn children, and infant mortality can be decreased.
Before this initiative, women would have been left to give birth in the fields or on mud floors. Now, the free ambulance brings pregnant women across dusty roads to health clinics where they can give birth safely under basic medical supervision, be nursed afterwards and educated on the importance of breastfeeding and hygiene before returning to their villages and communities.
Photos for this series were shot in Feb. 24, but were made available to msnbc.com March 6.
Related link:
Vivek Prakash / Reuters
Pravesh Chandravansingh Yadav, a 25-year-old woman in labor, winces in pain as she tries to lie down on a maternity table at a district hospital in Shivpuri, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Vivek Prakash / Reuters
Anguri, a 26-year-old woman in labour, lies on a maternity table as she gives birth to a baby girl at a community health center in the remote village of Chharchh, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Vivek Prakash / Reuters
Women who recently gave birth and their relatives rest in a post delivery ward at a district hospital in Shivpuri, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Vivek Prakash / Reuters
Anguri, 26, rests on a bed along with her newborn baby in the post delivery ward at a community health center in the remote village of Chharchh, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Vivek Prakash / Reuters
A relative of Aklesa Yadav, a 21-year-old woman who has just given birth, carries her new born baby out of a maternity ambulance as they return home at a rural area near the remote village of Chharchh, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Milk Truck provides haven for breastfeeding mothers
Keith Srakocic / AP
Jill Miller drives her Milk Truck, near her Pittsburgh home, Jan. 19. The truck is a vehicle she made for spreading the message that nursing mothers have the need and the right to feed their infants in public.
AP reports:
PITTSBURGH, Pa. -- It's the Milk Truck, spreading the message that nursing mothers have the need and the right to feed their infants in public.
Jill Miller, an artist and mother, said she got the idea after the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh asked her to do a project of her choice last year.
...
Keith Srakocic / AP
Jill Miller talks about her Milk Truck.
"I wouldn't say every woman in Pittsburgh has been asked to cover up — that would be totally overblowing it," Miller said. "But there were these stories I would hear that seemed almost like urban legends."
The stories were noteworthy because Pennsylvania has a law guaranteeing women the right to breastfeed in public without harassment, she said.
...
Miller estimates that the project cost about $16,000, most of it from Kickstarter, an online funding platform for artists, inventors, and explorers. People describe their projects and set a funding goal, and contributors get something in return, such as artwork and personal thank-you notes.
Someone once described Miller's artwork as "very funny upfront, but very serious on the backside."
"It opens up a conversation with a lightness to have a giant breast on a truck. For me, the humor is very important. I couldn't do the project without it," said Miller.
Daisy Klaber Miksch, who runs a business that offers singing and music classes to children and families, recalled the first time she saw the truck.
"It made me smile," she wrote in an email. "What it said, and says, to me is, 'Breasts are nice. Nursing is nice! Here's a friendly reminder. Take a moment to consider changing your negative reaction to a mom who's breastfeeding her kid. Lighten the mood!"
Miksch isn't a mother, but said she has sisters and friends who've been given dirty looks for breastfeeding in public.
"We all have our own hangups — about bodies, about sex, etc. ... Our culture very strongly associates breasts with sex. But the fact that it's cultural means it's changeable," she wrote.
Some people complained, especially after local newspapers and TV stations did stories on the Milk Truck last year.
One man sent an email saying that he could "donate money to your silly truck" or continue to give to the local food bank to help feed hungry children. He chose the food bank.
"What an insane cause you chose to rally behind. ... Pointless!" he wrote.
Miller found that people from all walks of life were willing to help the project, such as a local mechanic who donated his time fixing the 20-year-old truck because he thought it was so cool. He even start using her nickname for it: the boob truck.
"He just loves telling people he works on the boob truck. He has a T-shirt and a picture," Miller said.
...
The Warhol exhibit has closed, but Miller and McElfresh see new possibilities. Originally, they wanted the truck to be on call for mothers who get harassed in a public place, rushing to their aid with a comfortable, pink interior.
Keith Srakocic / AP
Jill Miller drives her Milk Truck, near her Pittsburgh home.
Over time they realized the Milk Truck was a valuable educational tool, even without a crisis. Stores for mothers and babies have invited the truck to park out front to show their support for breastfeeding, and it's appeared at public libraries.
"We have people all over the world who love the truck," Miller said. "We're now talking about having like a national tour. It would be like a rock band on a tour bus — but we are the tour bus," she said.
Related content:
Story: This truck brakes for nursing mamas
Site: The Milk Truck
Breast milk courier helps Indonesian moms cope
Beawiharta / Reuters
Lenny Rukiya Tampubolon stands in front of her office as she gives a bottle of her breast milk to Rudy, a breast milk motorbike courier, before he delivers the milk to her son at her home in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Jan. 18, 2012.
Reuters reports from JAKARTA on the breast milk motorbike couriers helping new moms to balance their home and work lives:
The service was launched in 2010 by Fikri Nauval, owner of a cargo and document shipping business, who said he was inspired by his wife's using one of his motorcycle riders to send her breast milk home to their baby after she had to return to work.
He charges 30,000 to 40,000 rupiah ($3.30 to $4.40) a trip, keeping track of traffic conditions and the best routes for drivers to take using a GPS map on a computer. Read the full story.
Beawiharta / Reuters
A courier holds a bottle of breast milk as he arrives at Lenny Rukiya Tampubolon's house in Jakarta, where he is greeted by Lenny's babysitter and son.
Beawiharta / Reuters
Lenny's babysitter feeds her son Abraham Pratama Prasetyo after the delivery.
Get more parenting news and views at TODAYMoms.
Afghanistan is statistically the worst place to be a mother
Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
Bibi Saiba, 25, suffers through hours of prolonged labor pains with her mother Bibi Jan, left, at her side and her aunt at the Badakhshan Provincial hospital June 2, 2011, in Faizabad, Badakshan, Afghanistan. Crises put pregnant women at greater risk due to sudden loss of medical support, trauma, malnutrition, disease and exposure to violence. According to UNICEF, 52 babies out of every 1,000 die within two weeks of birth and 134 die before their first birthday. While 1 in 8 women in Afghanistan die during pregnancy or childbirth making it the worst place in the world to be a mother. Many mothers are having children too young along with diet, and extreme poverty they face huge challenges having a healthy pregnancy. Afghan women also deal with vitamin D deficiency from staying indoors and being covered up. In the rural parts of the country, in remote areas Afghan women deliver with no skilled help because women cannot leave home without a male and there aren't enough midwives to help every mother in need given Afghanistan's poor infrastructure.
Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
Muhammed Walai holds his granddaughter who died at birth as Haibalan, the grandmother, watches at the Badakhshan Provincial hospital on June 1, in Faizabad, Badakshan, Afghanistan.
I was surprised to see that the United States ranked only 31st on the annual Save the Children Mothers' Index. Read more here.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
In Benghazi on Thursday, May 12, 2011, Mabroka Kwafi, 63, who has 2 sons fighting on the front line against Moammar Gadhafi troops, holds the portrait of her son Hamad Mohamed Hamad, a "martyr" who she said was killed by Gadhafi security forces in 1994. Libyans,some deep in mourning others invigorated by the spirit of the new free Libya, contemplate their past and hopes for the future in the hiatus between the Feb. 17 uprising that helped liberate Benghazi and uncertainty surrounding prolonged fighting for the rest of the country.
Reuters
Mauro (R) and his partner Juan Carlos from Spain hold their twin babies at a private hospital after an Indian surrogate mother delivered twin baby girls for them in New Delhi February 16, 2011. Surrogate motherhood is among the latest in a long list of roles being outsourced to India, where rent-a-womb services are far cheaper than in the West. Fertility clinics usually charge $2,000-$3,000 for the procedure while a surrogate is paid anything between $3,000 and $6,000, a fortune in a country with an annual per capita income of around $500. But the practice is not without its critics in India with some calling it the "commoditisation of motherhood" and an exploitation of the poor by the rich.
Couple with new twins in India, where surrogate mothers earn between $3,000 and $6,000
Here are two stories from the Times of India about this couple and surrogate motherhood in India.
Sean D. Elliot / The Day via AP
Sharon Preuss greets her son, Jason Preuss, after she pinned on his badge during a swearing-in for new firefighters for the New London, Conn., Fire Department, Jan. 7, 2011, in the City Council Chambers. Three of the seven new firefighters were hired to fill vacancies, and the other four were hired using federal grant money.
Proud mother congratulates her newly sworn-in firefighter son
This picture reminds me of the first photographic advice I received from my photojournalism instructor too many years ago. He said, “Go early. Stay late. Step into the crowd.”
Vincent Kessler / Reuters
Italy's Member of the European Parliament Licia Ronzulli takes part with her baby in a voting session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg September 22, 2010. At right, a wider view of voting.
European government
I wanted to see what you guys thought about people bringing babies into work. Is it progressive, traditional, both? I included another image here to provide some context for her raised arm.