Category Archives: Tuba City
Tuba City
Here is one last group of photos from my New York Times piece about maternity care in Tuba City, AZ. I took these pictures in March of 2010, in and around the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation’s Women’s Clinic and OB ward.
Uutsi’yma’s Hopi Naming Ceremony
After Monica Kahe gave birth to her fourth child at the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation, she kept him indoors, away from the sun, for three weeks. Monica is a teacher on the Hopi reservation, and her husband Preston works at the hospital. On the morning of the last day, his relatives came over before the sun rose, bringing corn pudding, mutton stew, and blue corn meal to exchange as gifts.
They dabbed blue corn meal on Monica’s face, washed mother and baby’s hair, and waited for sunrise. When the night started to fade, the baby’s mother, aunt and grandmother brought him outside to meet the sun, and his grandmother read the long list of names that his paternal female relatives had given him. He would be called Uutsi’yma.
Afterward, the guests laughed and talked while eating mutton stew, corn pudding and cherry pie for breakfast. I was grateful that Monica had invited me to photograph the ceremony, and happy to have met her warm family.
These photographs were first published in the New York Times.
Lactation Consultant in Tuba City
I recently traveled to Tuba City, AZ on assignment for the New York Times. I went to photograph a story that I had found: a hospital in a small, dusty reservation town had remarkably low Cesarean rates, provided midwives at all deliveries, and allowed women with previous C-sections to deliver vaginally (VBAC). Here are the resulting article and the audio slide show.
This is a small story within the larger story.
Elsie Elthie is a lactation consultant at the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation. She visits nursing mothers in the hospital and at home to teach them how to successfully breastfeed their babies. Though it may sound straightforward, nursing can be complicated and painful, and informed advice can mean the difference between breast milk and formula.
