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http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=5438

Soldier bridges cultural gap during search

By Sgt. 1st Class Todd Oliver


Staff Sgt. Gina Gray holds newly born Zuher. Gray helped deliver Zuher during Operation Ivy Cyclone when paratroopers of 2nd Battalion, 503d Infantry (Airborne) were searching the house and discovered the mother needed help.



KIRKUK, Iraq (Army News Service Nov. 21, 2003) -- Staff Sgt. Gina Gray, a broadcast journalist assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, found herself in the unusual position of playing doctor, nurse and midwife to an Iraqi mother too poor to afford a trip to the hospital to give birth.

"Thank god I've watched 'E.R.,'" was about all she could mutter as she emerged, from the building holding a baby boy. The newborn, Zuher Ahmed Mohowed, was not even an hour old.

While searching a house in Kirkuk Nov. 17, the paratroopers of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry (Airborne) were asked by the house owner not to disturb one of the rooms. Further investigation with an interpreter only revealed that there was a 'sick woman' inside.

The commander in the area, trying to be sensitive to the owner's wishes while still wanting to conduct a thorough search, sent for the only female soldier in the area, Gray.

Putting her video camera aside, she approached the house and was told to see if everything was ok in there and "oh, by the way, see if there are any weapons in the room while you're at it."

"I really had no idea what to expect," Gray said. "When I went in there, the baby had just finished coming out. She, the mother, was just laying there in pain and the other women were wiping the baby down."

It is often said that "timing is everything," and if that's true, then Gray's timing is surely something. She entered the room as the umbilical cord was about to be cut and the women were attempting to extract the placenta. Within moments, she stuck her head out the door, asked that no one come in and that someone get her a combat lifesaver's bag.

"She was pretty surprised to see me I think," Gray said. "She saw me walk through the door. I mean think about it, here I am with a weapon and body armor, and she's just had a baby.”

Gray took off her body armor and helmet to let everyone in the room know she was there to help. “They were more impressed when I took off my Kevlar and they saw the hair," Gray said.

The baby had just been born and a few moments old at the most.

"They cut the cord and got the placenta out and that's when I called for the combat lifesaver's bag and the medic," she said. "She was trying to push out the placenta and they wanted me to help by putting my hands up there. That finally got out and I noticed she was torn pretty badly."

Spc. Anthony Durate, the medic at the scene, helped Gray. Duarte had helped deliver a baby as a civilian, but this was his first in Iraq and his first under such austere conditions.

"I walked in there about the time the placenta was out," Duarte said. "I gave her some pain medication, some morphine, and checked her vitals."

"I just did what I could do," Duarte said. "I talked through the interpreter and was able to give her some medication and then get an IV into her. They're going to be fine."

"I just held her hand, tried talking to her, tried to calm her down," Gray said. "I guess in Iraq, the culture is different. I know in America when you have a baby, they wipe it down and hand it to you.

“But here she had the baby, they wiped him off, bound him up and she still hasn't held the baby that I know of," Gray said shortly after the event.

While language and cultural barriers may be hampering the process of rebuilding much of Iraq, there was no such effect between the two mothers.

"If you've ever had a baby you understand what pain is," said Gray, the mother of a 3-year-old boy herself. "That's a universal thing. I knew what she was going through. She was just in pain, I knew. I could sympathize with her. I saw that she had torn and I know how much that hurts. I tried to clean that up a little bit, but I think she just wanted someone there. She just held my hand."

The baby boy, Zuher, is doing fine.

"I just didn't want all of you coming in there," she said with a grin to the male soldiers. "I didn't want any of the tough infantry guys fainting."