Renee Sicignano Valencia resident Renee Sicignano was volunteering at a hospital in Haiti when a young girl came in — she was probably 14 years old and about 24 to 26 weeks pregnant. The girl’s baby had died, and with no epidural and no pain medication, she was about to undergo a more-than-brutal surgical procedure.   Making matters worse, the doctor and nurse didn’t speak the same language as the mother did and they were not comforting at all. In fact, there was an utter lack of compassion for the girl.  “It was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen,” Sicignano said of the 2016 incident during a recent telephone interview. It was also a moment that stays with her always and reminds her why she does what she does.  Sicignano, 59, is a midwife. She makes multiple trips a year to Haiti to help women there deliver their babies safely. She currently does this work as chair of the board of directors of MamaBaby Haiti, which is an international, fully Haitian-run nonprofit organization that operates two birth centers, health clinics and a midwifery school in Haiti.  MamaBaby Haiti was founded after a 2010 earthquake rocked the West Indian Island of Hispaniola, which is comprised of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.   “Two of my colleagues went down and saw that there was a need, because Haiti has more mothers than babies dying,” Sicignano said. “They have the worst maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality in the Western Hemisphere.”  To help address the situation, MamaBaby Haiti employs about 20 Haitian midwives and a couple dozen other Haitian staff members, including guards, drivers, cooks, cleaners and assistants. The all-volunteer board of the organization is American, and it seeks funding through grants and private donors, many through the group’s website at MamaBabyHaiti.org.  According to Sicignano, everything MamaBaby Haiti offers to pregnant women in Haiti is free of charge.  “Twenty-six dollars, according to the World Health Organization, will save a woman’s life from hemorrhaging to death,” she said. “That covers the training of a midwife, part of a midwife salary, and the medicine needed to stop a hemorrhage.”  Additionally, MamaBaby Haiti trains women to be midwives, not just for the organization, but so that other women in the communities can go back to their villages and serve their people.  MamaBaby Haiti is looking for 2,024 people to sign up to give $26 a month, which would make up the monthly operating budget of $50,000. Sicignano said the group’s biggest outreach is through its Instagram page, which is MamaBaby Haiti International.  It’s a challenge, but Sicignano said she’s up for it. She added she was meant to do this work.   Portrait of Renee Sicignano earlier this month in Newhall. Habeba Mostafa/The Signal Born and raised in New York, Sicignano is the youngest of seven kids. She discovered midwifery, believe it or not, when she was about 10 or 11 years old.  “My older brothers and sisters were having babies in the early ’70s,” she said. “So, I learned about midwives from my oldest brother and oldest sister.”  Sicignano knew right away it was for her. It wasn’t because it was a good career. In fact, she said she’d come to learn it was an extremely difficult vocation. However, her Christian upbringing led her to believe she was called to do it.   Then she got older and went into acting. She got a degree in theater, worked off Broadway in New York, married an actor (Cliff Weissman), and their careers would bring the two of them to California.  “That’s what you did then,” she said. “East Coasters came west because there was work here for actors. And then I had my first two kids — my only two kids — and I used midwives.”  It was after having her second child — he was born at home — that she decided to change careers. She realized acting was a terrible profession, especially for women, she said, and her passion for midwifery resurfaced.   In August 2000, Sicignano became a doula, providing guidance and support to pregnant women during childbirth.   Not long after that, she went back to school to become a licensed midwife. In 2008, she started a private practice in Santa Clarita. Two years later, Sicignano opened the first birth center in Santa Clarita — the SCV Birth Center — on Lyons Avenue in Newhall.   Renee Sicignano meets with a patient earlier this month at SCV Birth Center in Newhall. Habeba Mostafa/The Signal It was around that same time that a friend of hers, Valencia resident Alise Howe, told her about a midwife program in Haiti. Sicignano took part in the program with Howe. Sicignano’s second experience in that capacity was during that horrific scene with the 14-year-old mother who’d lost her child before she gave birth.   Despite what she saw — or perhaps because of it — Sicignano knew there was more for her to do there. But she needed the right group.  According to Howe, some volunteer services are actually doing a disservice out there.  “They’re basically like doing medical tourism,” Howe said. “So, even though people go into it wanting to make a difference, sometimes you can end up causing harm.”  Howe spoke about medical volunteer groups that go over to places like Haiti, get the community to depend on them, and then they lose funding or pick up and leave for some reason or another, and the communities they were once helping are stuck in worse shape than before.  What attracted Sicignano to MamaBaby Haiti was that they were building and fostering sustainable programs with the Haitians, teaching them to take care of their own. Sicignano had found her group.  But she didn’t feel comfortable travelling to Haiti regularly until her kids were older. It wasn’t until around 2012 that she began making solo trips there, which was something she said her family came to accept when they knew it was something she just had to do.  However, her visits to Haiti can be dangerous. Sicignano often travels through areas that are notorious for having gangs of kidnappers. In some cases, she has to draw the proverbial line.   In one particular case, she was in northern Haiti on her way to one of the MamaBaby Haiti birth centers when the midwives traveling with her told her they were going to pass through a particularly rough part of the country. They told her she’d have to hide.   “I’ve had to do that before — like, lay in the back of a truck and get covered with like a blanket,” Sicignano said. “But this time, I was like, ‘Wait a minute, you’re going to hide me in a box?’ I thought of my husband and my kids, and I was like, ‘I can’t do that. I can’t be put in a box.’”  When she’s there, though, Sicignano is always productive. She’ll work 18 hours a day. It’s all worth it, she said. The group is doing about 200 births a month. Word of mouth about MamaBaby Haiti has spread throughout Haiti and pregnant women keep coming.    According to Howe, there’s no better person than Sicignano to face the challenge.  “Renee is a person who never feels like there’s something that can’t be accomplished,” Howe said. “If I went to her and I was like, ‘Hey, Renee, I think I’m going to build a house from scratch.’ She’d be like, ‘Let’s do it.’ That’s the way she goes at everything.”  The dire situation in Haiti with the maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality, Howe said, is no exception. Sicignano, she added, goes for it with passion and enthusiasm.  Portrait of Renee Sicignano earlier this month at SCV Birth Center in Newhall. Habeba Mostafa/The Signal Over the years, Sicignano has witnessed mothers of all ages — from 12 years old and up — delivering babies at the MamaBaby Haiti birth centers. Many women will walk for hours to get to the MamaBaby Haiti centers for help. These mothers will show up with no money, no food and no water. And they’re in labor.   “We can give them water and give them something to eat and hold their hand because they’re alone, and help them not die,” Sicignano said. “I’ve seen these Haitian midwives save lives and save their babies’ lives just by having a skilled attendant. And I’ve witnessed it time and time and again.”  Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected].  The post Faces of the SCV: Midwife finds her purpose  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.