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Friday, January 18, 2013

Good things come to those that wait!


After an intensive week of training our new nurses, the new sparkly Kitovu Hospital Baby Unit has finally opened.  And the word seems to have spread amongst the baby community, as they keep coming! 

Open at Last!!!
One of our sweet premature babies decided to contribute to the “real-life” feel of our training, which we felt was very considerate.  On the Thursday afternoon, a student nurse timidly came into the Baby Unit room, apologised for the interruption, and proceeded to greet individually everyone there with a charming “good afternoon”.... before mentioning that there was a baby needing resuscitation.  We rushed through to the labour suite where the baby was, and found her not breathing, grey in colour, and with her hysterical mother by her side.  Luckily, we were very much in “resuscitation mode”, having been training all week, so immediately went through the motions of coordinated breaths and compressions. 

Honestly, we felt like it was getting futile, but with all our new nurses observing, it seemed a good thing to continue until we had emphasised all the important parts of baby resuscitation.  However, Praise God (x100), after removing all the milk from the baby’s stomach, she suddenly decided to start breathing again!  Not only that, but she is alive, squirmy, perky, feeding, growing and a real delight, two whole weeks later, all at the weight of just 1.14kg.  What a blessing that we had all been there training!  A serious case of God’s good timing!  And the really wonderful thing is how dedicated her mum is to her (something we have found quite unusual in our premature babies, as often the mothers are just plain scared of them, and find it difficult to bond with them).  Do keep them in your prayers, though, as all these little ones can have a rocky road ahead of them.
The Little Fighter!

The only challenge now is getting the nurses to stop trying to save a baby who is clearly very very dead – and that is a challenge I never dreamed we would have.  We are really delighted with our new staff!

It’s a sad and unusual week, because we have no new news on our chickens, other than the standard Jaffie-related daily maulings.  However, that doesn’t mean that Jaffie has not been getting into trouble in other new ways, purely to entertain us.  Last week, Sarah was very amused when an indignant and pained-looking Tim came into the house.  It seems that he had been playing with Jaffie, who had got over-excited and leapt up to bite the nearest hanging object she could find.  Thankfully he was wearing a fairly baggy pair of shorts, which went some way to “softening the bite”.  Fortunately for you, we have no photo of that, but we do have a photo of the kitchen after Jaffie was left in charge of it for the day! 
What a house-proud pup!

Finally, we have a new regular section of our blog for you which we have entitled: 
“You know you’re in Uganda when....”

1.     You see something you like in the shop and feel the immediate urge to buy 10, as next week, no doubt, it will be out of stock
2.     You open a jar of “blueberry jam” (an exciting Christmas gift that Tim had been overjoyed to spot) to be greeted by something resembling Fungus the Bogeyman’s snot!
3.     You pre-order, and pre-pay for, breakfast (in order to ensure all items on the menu will be there), and then arrive the next day to find that “we don’t have the breakfast today”
4.     Your football tournament is stopped for 10 minutes in order to disentangle a large horned cow from the goal net

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