Hanaa Mohammed Abo Kassem.

Dr. Hanaa is an Egyptian woman, wife, and a loving mother to a girl and a boy, she studied in the faculty of medicine, Alexandria University, where she also obtained her masters degree in obstetrics and gynecology in 2001.

She chose to study obstetrics and gynecology because she loves the moment a mother embraces her baby moments after birth. Pure love, gushing emotions, the innocence of the baby, the mother’s joy, and the looks they share fill her with happiness.

Her vision is to increase the number of natural births and help mothers have a satisfying and positive pregnancy and birth. She dreams of seeing Egyptian hospitals like the ones in Dubai, where the delivery happens in a room with all means of comfort available, with a pool in the corner full of warm water for if the mother wishes to have a water birth.

All Dr. Hanaa hopes for is a decrease in the number of caesarean childbirths in Egypt and the whole world for the sake of the mother’s and the baby’s health, and for women to enjoy a happy and healthy pregnancy, delivery and nursing experience. Dr.Hanaa is a ray of positive energy, love, encouragement and support for those around her. As her mantra goes “Birthing with love changes the world”.

She wanted to be surrounded by this and that’s why she chose this field. But there was a difference between what she had learned, read and studied, what she felt as a human and a mother, and what actually happens in the real world.

Her biggest shock was the lack of humanity and spirituality during birth and the amount of pain and agony a woman experienced during birth. Birth had become an experience women feared and hated as opposed to what it is supposed to be, a moment of love, honest feelings and the beginning of a new life with the most precious person.

Dr. Hanaa didn’t surrender to this harsh reality; believing in every woman’s right to enjoy a safe and joyful natural delivery. She studied and learned that the definition of a natural birth is a spontaneous delivery, and she found out that the W.H.O and The Royal College of gynecologists and obstetricians advises that the rate of caesarean deliveries should be no higher than 10 to 15%.

Unfortunately, when she started her hospital based medical career, she found that giving birth had become a highly medicalized medical event; full of drugs, anesthesia, medical intervention, a lot of pain and suffering for mother and child, and their separation right after birth.

It was no longer a spontaneous delivery; it completely lacked any sort of empathy or humanity. However, Dr Hanaa believed as a mother, a woman and a doctor, that birth is a miracle and part of every woman’s physiology, this made her even more determined and lead her to search for a model for safe childbirth. This is when she met her American coach and friend “Aisha EL Hajjar”.

In 2010 she travelled to the United States where she attended the American Academy for natural childbirth and learned “The Bradley method of childbirth “to become the first certified Egyptian teacher of this method in Egypt.

She travelled again in 2013 and 2015 to attend seminars and workshops all dedicated to natural and water birth. She became certain she was on the right path, and her knowledge strengthened her certainty that birth is a physiological event , so she decided to make a real change in maternity care. Her first experience and the first water birth in the Middle East happened in 2013, she remembers well how the water soothed the mother, decreased her pain and hastened the birth.

Dr Hanaa says “I could hear my heart beating when the baby was coming out, I placed him in his mother’s embrace, the father was holding her from behind, in tears at the beauty of the scene, and all the staff had witnessed a true natural water birth”.

She was more determined than ever to keep going, and her three-years as the training manager at “The Alexandria regional women’s centre” gave her a great opportunity to organise workshops and seminars, she organised the first conference for natural childbirth in the Middle East in 2014 with the title of: “Changing birth practices; a step towards reducing caesarean deliveries”.

During the closing ceremony of the conference the first doulas of “The Arab republic of Egypt” graduated from the “Amani” program, trained by the American coach and founder “Aisha Al Hajjar”.The trainees from Egypt were from Alexandria and Cairo, Britain, South Africa and Malaysia. She held the first water birth workshop in the Middle East, which was attended by many doctors and nurses from Egypt, Africa, Malaysia and some Arab countries. during her time at the “A.R.C”, she also hosted a lot of foreign lecturers who are specialists in water births and natural childbirth, for example, the world renowned coach Barbra Harper during her workshops and conferences to help spread medical awareness of the importance of natural childbirth.

In 2014 she gave the first lecture in Egypt about water birth for the anniversary celebrations of the “A.R.C” which was attended by over a thousand ob/gy doctors. She has travelled to Kurdistan, African countries such as Kenya and also to some Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia to give lectures on safe childbirth and water births. She has delivered and help deliver many babies in these countries, she also helped set up the first centre to teach childbirth in Kenya, in addition she has taught African delegations about natural childbirth.

In 2015 she held the second conference for natural childbirth in the middle east with the title of: “Promoting midwifery education in the middle east”

Dr.Hanaa is Egypt’s representative for the “Baby friendly hospital initiative”.

In 2016 she succeeded in founding the “Mums’ haven” centre for safe child and water births. She decided to choose colours and decorate the centre making sure that everything about it spoke of nothing but taking care of a mother and providing her and her baby with a safe a friendly place ensuring that it really is a mum’s haven. In a statement while visiting the centre, Barbra Harper the midwife said that it was the best centre and the first internationally certified centre for water births in Egypt.