by the Universidad of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Michigan.— First-time mom Brandi Phare thought she was all alone when she began suffering postpartum ailments. She experienced pain as a result of multiple tears on her body from giving birth, and also faced severe incontinence.

Unbeknownst to Phare, she was in the majority.

“Easily over half of women who have vaginal birth, at least their first birth, will have some problem in terms of bowel, bladder or sexual dysfunction that can occur,” said Dee Fenner, M.D., director of the University of Michigan Health System’s Healthy Healing After Delivery Program. Fenner is also a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, director of both Gynecology and Surgical Services, and the Harold Furlong Professor.

“Afterward, I would tell people that I was having problems and they would just say, ‘Oh yeah, I had that’ why would you not tell people?” Phare wondered.

Many women wrongly believe that postpartum ailments are simply a part of giving birth, and that they need not be addressed.

Fenner urges women to take care of their own health after delivery, not solely their infant’s.

“Unfortunately, I think many women suffer in silence in that they don’t really complain or know that something can be done,” Fenner said.

Luckily for Phare, she went in to see a U-M nurse about her incontinence and other problems, and was then referred to U-M’s Healthy Healing After Delivery Program.

She received a device and medication to help her incontinence. “Now I’m not having any problems at all,” Phare said.

About 15 percent of new mothers end up needing surgery for various reasons, including leakages of urine or a tear that did not heal correctly.

“We want to empower the women to give them the education, to give them the tools,” Fenner said.

The U-M clinic involves physicians, nurses, midwifes, physical therapists and more to offer comprehensive postpartum care to new mothers. The program offers education in the form of teaching sheets that say what is normal or abnormal, when to worry and when to just wait for healing to occur.

­It also offers pelvic floor training, in addition to other programs and medications. It is open to any woman, regardless of where she delivered her baby.

Tips: If you experience any of the following symptoms after giving birth, talk to your health care provider:

* bowel incontinence

* urinary incontinence

* non-healing episiotomy

* deep cuts or lacerations

* rectovaginal fistulas

* difficulty with intercourse Written by Haley Otman.

by the El Reportero’s news services

Thousand of people wait for the arrival of Zelaya.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Ousted President Manuel Zelaya was kept from landing at the main Honduras airport on Sunday because the runway was blocked by groups of soldiers with military vehicles, some of them lined up against a crowd of thousands outside. His Venezuelan ­pilot circled around the airport and then decided not to risk a crash.

Zelaya landed in Nicaragua and vowed to try again today or tomorrow in his high-stakes effort to return to power in a country where all branches of government have lined up against him, including the military that shot up his house and sent him into exile in his pajamas a week earlier.

“I am the commander of the armed forces, elected by the people, and I ask the armed forces to comply with the order to open the airport so that there is no problem in landing and embracing with my people,” Zelaya said from the plane.

“Today I feel like I have sufficient spiritual strength, blessed with the blood of Christ, to be able to arrive there and raise the crucifix.”

But interim President Roberto Micheletti insisted on preventing the plane from landing and said he would not negotiate until “things return to normal.”

“We will be here until the country calms down,” Micheletti said. “We are the authentic representatives of the people.”

But as this editions goes to press, supporters of 1ousted Honduras president Manuel Zelaya returned to the streets yesterday after two people died in clashes with the army, as the deposed leader headed to Washington to meet Hillary Clinton.

Zelaya said in Nicaragua he would travel later in the evening to Washington where he would hold talks with the US Secretary of State.

But vowing to return to Honduras, he promised not to repeat the mistake of announcing his return, as he did on Sunday, only to find his destination blocked by the military.

The crisis that led to the ouster of Honduran president Zelaya began to germinate in November 2008, when he announced his intention to call a referendum on whether to convene a constituent assembly to consider a package of constitutional reforms, including one which would allow Zelaya to be reelected.

Zelaya wanted to hold the actual convocation vote on November 29, simultaneously with the general elections.

He said he would not remain in power beyond the end of his current mandate in January 2010 — unless the people were to ask him to continue.

Zelaya won wide international support after his military ouster, but the presidents decided against flying on Zelaya’s plane, citing security concerns. Flying with Zelaya were close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur, and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest, and former foreign minister.

Honduras’ new government has vowed to arrest Zelaya for 18 alleged criminal acts, including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Congress since taking office in 2006.

Despite a Supreme Court ruling, Zelaya had also pressed ahead with a referendum on whether to hold an assembly to consider changing the constitution.

Critics feared he might press to extend his rule and cement presidential power in ways similar to his ally Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

But instead of prosecuting him or trying to defeat his referendum idea at the ballot box, other Honduran leaders sent masked soldiers to fly Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, and Congress installed Micheletti in his place.

On July 5, the Organization of American States (OAS) suspended Honduras by 33 votes (with one abstention – Honduras) and two people were killed by soldiers at Tegucigalpa airport as the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, made an unsuccessful attempt to return to the country… Latin News, The Australian, and Associated Press contributed ­to this report.

­

by the El Reportero’s staff

Hugo Chávez

Latin American fighters against American imperialism announced their yet another victory. The members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) decided to introduce the regional currency for mutual settlement, the Sucre (Sistema Unico de Compensacion Regional). The new currency is to be put into circulation from January 2010. Experts are not certain whether the idea to “bite the USA” can become an advantage in such a complex undertaking.

For the time being, the Sucre bears a resemblance to Europe ’s ECU (the European Currency Unit), which was a virtual currency before the introduction of the euro.

The first joint Latin American currency is a victory for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies in Cuba. The two countries founded the ALBA in 2004 to oppose Washington ’s idea about the creation of the free trade zone for the two Americas.

The ALBA follows the practice of the international barter exchange. For example, Cuba provides its specialists for Venezuela’s social programs in return to Venezuela ’s oil shipments to the country. In addition, the members of the organization receive Venezuelan oil at discount prices.

The dollar peg became a weak point of the organization, but the new currency is expected to remove the political and economic risks of the dollar-based turnover.

Hugo Chavez said that the Sucre would be launched as a virtual currency and would then proceed as a full-fledged regional currency, which would help Latin American countries forget about the dictatorship of the US dollar. It is hard to describe the ALBA as a strong organization. It unites Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Dominica.

Ecuador acts as an observing nation, Paraguay is likely to become a member in the near future too. However, it is only Venezuela that plays an important role in the Latin American world. (Pravda).

Andrei Gangan, an analyst with Kalita Finance, compares the circumstances, which led to the birth of the Sucre, with the history of the euro.

“It took Europe 20 years to shape up the euro.

A European country must correspond to a number of criteria to be added in the euro zone. The euro became the second most important currency in the world as a result of tough tax and budget policies. All the countries of the monetary union were economically and politically developed countries at the moment when they were added in the euro zone.

“Now look at the members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. If we disregard the political aspect and analyze their macroeconomic indexes, it will become clear that the introduction of the joint regional currency will not change the state of affairs in those countries. The introduction of a joint currency ­stipulates tough control, the universal legal base, the joint issuing center and many other issues that cannot be solved within a year or two. Any kind of haste will inevitably result in a failure of any large-scale idea,” the specialist said.

Other specialists say that an opportunity for a number of countries to introduce a joint currency appears only after their economic growth becomes stable. The birth of the euro was pushed several years back due to the economic decline in Europe in the beginning of the 1990s. (Pravda)

by Jake Rollow

EL PASO, Texas—A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives this month would make it easier for persons born outside of hospitals but within the United States to gain U.S. passports. It would especially benefit Mexican Americans who live along the U.S.-Mexico border, whose complaints of prejudice and harassment by the U.S. State Department are mostly unresolved. H.R. 2812, introduced June 10 is sponsored by Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas), and cosponsored by four Hispanic House colleagues. All are Democrats representing jurisdictions in the border states of Texas and Arizona.

If successful, the bill would require that a U.S. birth certificate signed by a midwife be considered sufficient evidence of U.5. citizenship. It would also prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity or ancestry of applicants for U.S. passports. By tradition and be cause of access and expense, many Mexican families engage midwives. The practice is common along the U.S. border.

Linda Arnold, founder and director of Casa de Nacimiento, a state-licensed birth center in the border town of El Paso, explained the issue’s increasing significance.

Since June 1, when the State Department put into effect the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative~ U.S. citizens have been required to show passports to re-enter the United States at land crossings. Because many residents cross the border frequently, this makes possession of a passport a necessity in day-to-day border life.

A practicing midwife herself, Arnold told Weekly Report that along the border, some Mexican nationals have been reported to offer midwives up to $10,000 to sign fraudulent U.S. birth certificates for children not born in the United States. Doing so made it easy for the children to claim U S. citizenship, and created a way to make a good amount of money in the practice of midwifery, which wasn’t strictly regulated.

Now the State Department requires parents of children delivered by midwives to show proof in addition to U.S. birth certificates to obtain a passport. Arnold said she Understands the State Department’s dilemma, but does not believe the process should be as demanding as it has been. In 1987 the state of Texas started licensing birth centers.

Arnold said she believes children with certificates establishing their birth at such centers should be eligible for passports without having to obtain additional documentation.

That is not always the case, she said. Arnold said Mexican mothers who give birth at simultane Casa de Nacirniento, even after producing notarized letters from the center stating their children were born in the United States, are still having trouble gaining passports for their children from the U.S. State Department.

“That, in my opinion, is prejudice against this particular demographic,” Arnold said.

The American Civil Liberties Union agrees. Last September the ACLU filed a class­action lawsuit on behalf of nine plaintiffs alleging that the State Department unfairly challenged the citizenship of Mexican Americans delivered by midwives in the Southwest, requiring excessive documentation to prove their entitlement to citizenship. The suit is still pending.

Mary Darling, a midwife and the director of another licensed birth center in El Paso, Maternidad La Luz, said she also believes Mexican parents and their Mexican American children are being harassed.

Maternidad La Luz provides all mothers a letter they can use when applying for the child’s passport. It includes the dates of all visits to the center for prenatal and postpantum care as well as the date of birth at the center. ~That seems to be working for our clients,” Darling said.

Darling said the majority of women who give birth at Maternidad La Luz live outside the United States. About 18,000 babies have been delivered there since the center opened 23yearsago, she stated. Arnold said 14,000 babies have been born at Casa de Nacimiento since she founded it in 1985.

According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, in 2008 there were 4,285,555 children born in the United States. Of those, 38,390, or nearly 1 percent, were born outside of hospitals. Hispanic Link.