What to pack for a birth, and where to keep the bag
Have the bag packed by the end of the seventh month and keep it where somebody else in the house can find it in the dark. A mama kit covers the clean-birth basics, including gloves, a plastic sheet, cord ties, a new razor blade, cotton wool and soap. The bag around it carries what the kit does not: your antenatal card, cloths and clothes for you, a wrap and a cap for the baby, a basin, food, a torch and the transport money kept apart from household money.
- Pack by the end of the seventh month. Babies do not read the expected date of delivery.
- The mama kit is the clean-birth part only. Most of what you need in the ward is not in it.
- Your antenatal card goes in the bag, in a plastic bag of its own, from the day you pack it.
- Somebody other than you must know where the bag is, because you may not be the one carrying it out of the house.
- Check the bag once a month. Torch batteries die and airtime disappears while the bag sits.
General information, not medical advice. If you are worried about a mother or a child, go to your nearest health facility or speak to your village health team.
What is in a mama kit, and what is not
A mama kit is a small package of the items needed for a clean birth: gloves, a plastic sheet to deliver on, cord ties, a new razor blade, cotton wool, gauze and soap. Its whole purpose is to make sure that whoever attends the birth is working with clean hands and clean equipment.
It is not a hospital bag. It has nothing for you to wear, nothing to wrap the baby in, nothing to eat and nothing to clean up with afterwards. Mothers who assume the kit is everything arrive with a small package and no basin, no cloths and no food, and then send somebody back on a boda in the middle of the night.
Contents differ depending on where the kit came from, so open yours when you get it and look. Do not open the sterile items inside it. Just check what is there against what you were told, and buy the gaps while there is still time.
What to pack around the mama kit, for you
This is the part most families underestimate. Pack it in a bag you do not use for anything else, so that nothing quietly migrates out of it.
None of it needs to be bought new, and none of it needs to be bought in one trip. Add an item a week from the sixth month and the list is finished without a single expensive afternoon.
- Your antenatal card, in its own plastic bag
- Two or three kitenge or lesu cloths, more than you think you need
- Old cloths or wrappers you are willing to throw away afterwards
- A gown or a loose dress that opens at the front for feeding
- Underwear you do not mind losing, and sanitary pads
- Soap, a small towel, a cup, a plate and a spoon
- A basin, or agreement with somebody who will bring one
- A torch, and a second set of batteries kept in the bag
- Drinking water and food you can eat cold, such as roasted groundnuts or a boiled cassava
- A polythene bag or two for soiled cloths
What to pack for the baby
Keep the baby's things in a separate smaller bag inside the main one, so somebody else can find them quickly without unpacking everything.
A wrap or two, a cap, socks, a small blanket and several cloths. Babies lose heat fast, especially at night and in the hills of Koboko, so the cap and the blanket matter more than people expect. Nothing needs to be new. Clean and dry beats new.
Do not pack feeding bottles or tins of formula on the assumption that you will need them. Your health worker will help you start feeding in the first hour, and that first feed is worth protecting.
When should the bag be ready?
The end of the seventh month. Not the ninth, and certainly not when the pains start.
Some babies come early, some mothers are referred to a facility further away with an hour's notice, and some households find on the night that the person who knew where everything was kept had travelled. A bag packed in the seventh month costs you nothing and removes twenty minutes of searching from the worst possible moment.
If you are still short of items in the seventh month, that is exactly what the extra weeks are for. Buy one item a week rather than trying to find the whole list in one trip to the trading centre.
Where should the bag be kept?
Somewhere fixed, dry, off the floor and known to at least two other people in the household. Behind the door of the bedroom, on a particular shelf, in a particular basket. Tell your husband, your mother or your co-wife, and tell the older children.
The reason is simple. If labour starts at night, or if you are unwell, the person who picks up the bag will not be you. A bag nobody else can locate in the dark is the same as no bag.
Keep it in a polythene bag or a sack inside the house, because a bag that sits for two months in a rural home meets rain, dust, cockroaches and rats.
Where should the transport money sit?
Not in the bag as loose cash, and not mixed with household money. Money that lives with the daily money gets spent on the day the maize runs out, and nobody plans for that to happen.
Keep it separate: with a trusted person outside the household, in a savings group emergency fund, or on mobile money kept apart from your trading float. If it is on mobile money, remember that at two in the morning a rider may want cash, and the agent's shutter is down. Keep some as notes.
Mothers registered on our Safe Birth programme receive a pre-paid boda voucher along with the delivery kit, which can be used the moment labour starts, day or night. If you are not registered, ask your village health team member what exists near you before you need it.
How do you keep the bag ready over two months?
Check it on the first of each month. It takes five minutes and it catches the things that quietly rot.
Test the torch. Batteries left in a torch for eight weeks in a humid house often leak. Check that the food you packed is still food. Check that the airtime on the phone you plan to use has not been finished by somebody watching videos. Check that the cloths have not been borrowed for something else, because they usually have.
Once a month, say the plan out loud with whoever will be at home with you: where the bag is, who calls the rider, where the money is, which facility you are going to.
What if you cannot get a mama kit?
Tell your village health team member and tell the midwife at your next antenatal visit, well before the ninth month. This is a common problem and it is better raised at seven months than at the gate.
In the meantime, buy what you can, one item at a time. A new razor blade still in its wrapper, cord ties, soap, cotton wool and a clean plastic sheet are the items that matter most and they are the ones a drug shop in a trading centre normally has.
Do not let a missing kit become a reason to deliver at home. Arriving at a facility with an incomplete bag is a far smaller problem than delivering at home with a complete one.
This guide describes what generally happens, not what will happen at your facility or your school. Costs, timetables and rules differ between districts and they change. Check anything that matters with your health worker, the head teacher, or your district office. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Questions people ask
- Will the health centre give me a mama kit when I arrive?
- Do not plan on it. Availability varies between facilities and between months, and the night you arrive is the wrong time to find out. Ask at an antenatal visit whether the facility currently supplies them, and prepare as though the answer is no.
- I am on my fourth baby and the last three were easy. Do I really need all this?
- Yes, and the fact that the earlier births went well does not carry over to this one. Packing a bag takes an afternoon. It is the cheapest part of the whole preparation.
- How many cloths do I actually need?
- More than you plan to bring. Take at least four for yourself and four for the baby. Cloths are the thing families most often run short of, and sending somebody home for more in the night is the outcome you are trying to avoid.
- Can I keep the bag at my mother's house instead?
- Only if that is where you will be when labour starts. Many women move to a relative nearer the facility in the last weeks, and in that case the bag should move with them on the same day, not after.
- Should I pack anything for the person coming with me?
- Yes, and it is usually forgotten. Whoever comes with you may be there overnight: they will need water, food, a cloth to sit on and their own transport money home.