LOUISVILLE, Ky. — January 23 is recognized as Maternal Health Awareness Day. One Health care system in Louisville is trying to ensure more expectant mothers get the information they need for a healthy pregnancy.
Baptist Health Louisville is now offering free online maternity education classes in Spanish. The program began last December. Classes are around two hours long and cover topics such as breastfeeding, labor and delivery. .
Elizabeth Pabon, a registered nurse of 22 years, says programs like this help to better educate mothers and their families about what to expect during pregnancy.
“We don’t want for the language barrier to get in the way of educating them on breastfeeding and labor,” Pabon said.
Pabon, who happens to speak Spanish, is the class instructor. She adds being able to speak with someone in their first language, helps ensure they get the information they need.
“It’s great, you know, just to have a conversation, casual conversation, we don’t want them to be afraid of asking questions and they feel more comfortable just asking questions that they need to know about themselves, the baby, what’s going on,” Pabon said.
Staff with the hospital believes this is the only widely accessible maternity education class presented entirely in Spanish in Kentucky.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do around preterm births and infant mortality rate and a lot of that starts with education,” Kelly Gardner, a nurse manager of the Baptist Health Louisville NICU and lactation team, said.
Gardner believes classes like this are needed, especially as Kentucky’s Hispanic population continues to grow.
Census data shows Kentucky’s Hispanic population grew 56.5% from 2010 to 2020. This data estimates there are over 207,000 people who identify as Hispanic or Latino in the Commonwealth.
“We have a lot of Spanish-speaking people here in Louisville and you can see kind of that, that fear in their eyes because they don’t know what’s going on and with these classes, we help them understand and be prepared for what is going to happen when they come to the hospital, and what they need prior to that, what they need afterwards,” Gardner said.
In a report released by March of Dimes, in 2021, one in eight babies were born preterm in Kentucky. The year before that, one in 12 born had a low birth weight.
The next Spanish language class put on by Baptist Health Louisville is Tuesday, Feb. 7. You can register for the class online.