It’s Mother’s Day this weekend, when World Vision UK is launching its Share A Smile campaign, inviting everyone to share their happiest mum moment. Amy Waddell, from Middleton-in-Teesdale, who recently travelled with the international aid agency to west Africa, explains how perilous childbirth can be for women in underdeveloped countries.

IN the West, pregnancy – by and large – is a time to be savoured, childbirth something to be celebrated. From the time they find out they are pregnant, women are constantly checked, prodded, monitored and treated swiftly for anything out of the ordinary.

In Sierra Leone, it’s a different story, as I found out when I met 29-year-old Mamie Jiah.

She was about to give birth to her eighth child, and facing one of the riskiest times of her life.

Here, without access to qualified midwives, scanners or even pain relief, women like Mamie face a terrifying one-in-eight chance of dying in childbirth. In the UK, the mortality rate is one in 8,200.

The odds of Mamie’s baby surviving are even worse: one child in every five dies before it reaches its fifth birthday, often from illnesses such as diarrhoea, which are easy to prevent or treat.

Mamie knows this only too well. Only two of her seven children are still alive. She’s not sure why: nobody has ever offered her an explanation.

One of her babies was stillborn. It’s the only time Mamie has ever gone past her due date.

When I arrived in Condor village, where Mamie lives, she was already a week overdue. Her anxiety was obvious, despite reassuring herself that the pregnancy had been normal and everything would be fine.

“People used to think some bad spirit had a hold over me,” she confides.

“Esther, my last-born, still wears the token around her neck that a Mende man, from my tribe, fixed for her when she was born – just in case there are any evil spirits to ward off.”

Mamie not only cares for her daughters, Esther, two, and Zainab, ten, but her seven brothers and sisters as well.

Her parents live and work away from Condor, where there are more opportunities to earn money. Still, in Sierra Leone the average wage is less than £200 a year.

Despite having nothing, Mamie and her family’s hospitality is overwhelming. Every day, I’m greeted with a pineapple or coconut from her brother’s farm or I find Mamie roasting a corncob for me on the small outdoor fire she uses to do her cooking.

As I get to know Mamie, I rarely see her without a smile. She teases me about my polite English manners: she’s never heard someone say “please” so often.

But early one morning, I find Mamie bent double in agony. There are no cars in the village, so we set off to walk the mile-and-a-half dirt-track that leads to the health centre.

Only during this pregnancy has Mamie regularly attended the health centre for check-ups and injections. Free healthcare was introduced in Sierra Leone last April. Before then, Mamie often couldn’t afford the 2,000 leones (30p) for an appointment. She explained that if you turned up with no money, the health workers would simply refuse to see you.

So, for her other seven pregnancies, Mamie visited her village’s traditional birth attendant.

This woman, with no health training, offered Mamie advice and assisted her births in a dark dusty hut without the use of any sterile or surgical equipment.

At the health centre, there’s one qualified health worker, a midwife, serving an area about the size of Durham City. Thankfully, she’s quickly able to diagnose Mamie’s infection and there’s a course of antibiotics in the pharmacy to clear it.

When I left Condor to travel back to the capital and catch my flight home, Mamie was still carrying her huge bump. Waiting in the airport, my phone rang: only a few hours after I left the village, Mamie had gone into labour. Holding her new baby, Kelvin, she spoke in short bursts of English mixed with laughter and relief.

I heard from Mamie a couple of weeks ago.

She’s settling well into life with a three-monthold, trying to help Esther adjust to her role as an older sister and no longer the baby of the family.

The great news is Kelvin is still healthy.

Every year more than three million children die in their first month of life, before they even manage their first smile.

Thankfully, both Mamie and Kelvin have made it through the most risky time of their lives.

“Each day, seeing Kelvin grow, is a blessing,”

says Mamie. “But I remember his first smile, he was two months old. I felt so happy to see my baby boy smile for the very first time.”

To celebrate, World Vision UK is launching its Share A Smile campaign, inviting everyone to share their happiest mum moment so mothers in the developing world have the chance to experience theirs too.

To get involved, share your happiest mummoment at worldvision.org.uk/mothersday Every mum moment will feature in World Vision’s online gallery at worldvision.org.uk/mothersday.