The surface of a hidden smile

I guess I somehow forgot to blog about yesterday. I was in OB the last two days, and have witnessed many births as God’s little babies enter the world. One of the girls on the trip brought lots of knitted baby hats that we have been handing out to the newborns. The mothers are very thankful for the hats. Most babies are just wrapped in kitene’s (large pieces of fabric with different types of designs). Oh and having a baby in Africa at the Chimala Mission Hospital is very different than having a baby in America. Although I have never had a baby myself, I have been through OB clinical and seen the American version of a birth. Now it is time for me to compare and contrast. In Tanzania, women are brought into the labor room where they lay on a hard table with a red mat on top of it. There are three tables right next to each other with a curtain in between them and about 2 feet separating each table. Women are not given pain medications, and they labor alone. Every thirty minutes we are to check fetal heart tones, and every four hours we are to perform a pelvic exam to determine the dilatation (as the Africans refer to it) or dilation in centimeters. The women can lay their kitenges down to have some sort of fabric underneath them. They have no pillows. Imagine how uncomfortable it must be to lay on a steel, hard, flat table all alone. Also, there are cockroaches all over the walls and floors. Mosquitos frequently buzz in your ears and you end up swatting at the air. Sterility…. Is a matter of opinion. I still am not sure what one determines is sterile because you hand fold the gauze and then it is placed in a steel can that you have to remove with “clean” clampers. The clampers are sitting in an open container. After the mother has birthed the baby, she is required to pack up her belongings, typically a bag, and grab her bloody kitenge, place it in a bucket, and walk to a bed in the main area of the ward. Many times the babies do not come out breathing and we have to perform CPR. Also, many times more than one person births a baby at the same time. This happened twice to me and I have delivered a baby with another nursing student alone. No other assistance. The baby was coming and the nurses nodded to take care of it. So, we went over and birthed a baby… I must say, I am still in shock about the past events. I can’t believe that I have birthed a baby! One time it was with Ashli, and the other time it was with Kellum. Both times the other girls, Kellum and Ashli took care of the baby, and I delivered the placenta and declotted the mother by wiping out her area. We would all take turns holding the babies and put the new knitted hats on them and then once mama was situated in her new bed we would take them and lay them down with mama for warmth and breastmilk. There were many births when I was in OB, so I decided to let someone else have a turn. I then went over to the female ward and had one mission… to make the little girl with sickle cell anemia smile. She had experienced a sickle cell crisis the previous day and she seemed so down. A sickle cell crisis is very painful because the sickled RBC’s get caught in the small cannals of a capillary, thereby causing hypoxia. This results in pain in the area that has been deprived of oxygen. This can happen in just one hand, or your hands, feet, back, abdomen… virtually anywhere, as well as cause further complications. So… I went over to the little girls bed and managed to sit down without her crying. She is terrified of the health care professionals because all that they do is prick and poke her for tests. So.. my mission has so far been successful. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, and so I just pretending like it didn’t matter. I opened a bottle of bubbles and blew through the device to make bubbles drift through the air. I got a glance. I continued to blow bubbles, and eventually had her full attention. Then I dipped the stick and held it up to her mouth, and she blew. A crack of a smile hit the corner of her lips. She continued to blow bubbles, and I got a smile… and then showed her how to pop the bubbles. Giggles rang throughout the ward. The lady in the bed next to her was also fascinated with the bubbles drifted and floating in the warm air. As the time went by, the entire bottle disappeared. I don’t even know how long we blew bubbles, but she loved it. Below is a picture of this precious girl smiling.