Beating The Odds...

Sometimes encouragement comes just at the right time, and with all the recent upheaval in the Baby Unit, Sarah was definitely in need of encouragement.  Meet Survivor. 

Her mother came to Kitovu Hospital at 27 weeks gestation.  What you need to know is that in Uganda, the official “survival age” for babies is 28 weeks gestation, therefore any baby born below that is called an “inevitable miscarriage”.  Their mothers aren’t even given steroids by doctors (giving the mother steroids helps the unborn baby’s lungs to develop), as after all “what’s the point” if they’re going to die anyway, right?

Survivor’s mother reasonably asked whether she could go home – she would rather be in her own surroundings if this baby was inevitably going to die.  Our baby unit nurses encouraged her and counselled her that some of these babies CAN survive.  So she stayed and gave birth to 1.08kg Survivor.  Survivor is now a month old.  Yes, of course, there was more than encouragement involved – there was a glucose infusion to keep her going when she couldn’t start to feed initially, a tube to help her mother give her expressed breast milk, antibiotics to prevent infection, medicine to help prevent her from stopping breathing, and warmth (via our overhead warmers, the Embrace sleeping bags, and mum herself doing kangaroo care).  But actually the thing that I am most proud of is our nurses taking the time to encourage a confused and scared mother, and thereby save a little baby from actually being the “inevitable miscarriage” that she was declared to be!  She is very well-named, isn’t she?

As well as an “inevitable miscarriage”, we also have an “intrauterine foetal death” on our unit!  After midwives couldn’t hear her heart beat, they told her mother that she had died.  I can’t imagine how distraught that poor mother must have been, especially since this was her seventh pregnancy, of which she had lost all but one baby.  Two days later, by caesarean section, doctors were a bit taken aback when this little baby was born alive, if in poor condition.  Amazingly, though, she is doing really well, and is even breastfeeding!  So here’s to babies beating the odds this month!

On other Baby Unit news, Sarah, and her trusty side-kick Baby Noah, have been continuing in their work to train all the midwives from the Maternity Ward in neonatal resuscitation, newborn care, and the workings of the Baby Unit.  However, staffing has really been a challenge over the past couple of weeks, which has prompted a number of strategic discussions.  It has been agreed that we should hire another nurse to be based permanently on the Baby Unit with Head Nurse Cathy, with the rest of the staffing offered by the newly trained (and certified.... yup, they have a practical and written test to be sure they’re up to scratch) midwives who rotate through the unit for a month at a time.  Since some of the midwives were unable to calculate a heart rate correctly in their tests (!!), the pool of midwives eligible to work on the Unit is quite small, but growing!

In addition, we’ve had an influx of exciting new Baby Unit equipment brought by visitors, and have got a new oxygen saturation monitor (the previous one having headed to that fluffy place in the sky), neonatal monitors, and a number of other treats that we’re enjoying putting into action.  So THANK YOU SO MUCH to Joy, Jo, Jan and Tracey!

Meanwhile, on a course last week, Sarah was somewhat baffled at the large number of new “facts” that she learnt from their (non-medical) trainer in the “health” module.  New revelations included....

·       You can catch sexually transmitted infections from toilet seats

·       You can figure out if you are pregnant with a girl or a boy depending on your age and the month you fell pregnant in

·       Family planning causes disabled children

·       Milk causes cancer

... and a whole host of other factoids which can only be described as twaddle. 

Hilariously, when Sarah decided to object as the presentation of spina bifida was being totally incorrectly described, the trainer looked at her and basically implied, reminiscent of Ron Burgundy (a.k.a. Anchor Man), that we should “agree to disagree”.  In HIS experience, he said, this was how it presented.  I guess 16 years of medical training and work doesn’t match up to his case study of 2 individuals!!!!

Things we’ve learnt about parenting the hard way...

#4: if you stand cooing over your naked son, there’s a decent chance you will get pee in your eye.  Normal saline is a far better eye irrigation fluid (though it doesn’t make as good a story).

Fornightus Horribilus...

Most unfairly, it’s not always fun and games in Casa del Crow, and this past 2-3 weeks have been unusually tough.  Firstly there’s been sadness in spades, with the loss of one dear colleague’s eldest son in a road traffic accident, followed soon after by the sudden death (after being unwell for 3 weeks, but then seemingly being on the mend) of another dear colleague. 

In addition, it has been a time of transition regarding the staff here at our church in Uganda, and some good friends and colleagues have disappointed us and saddened us in their behaviour.

We’ve also had some health issues to deal with, which necessitated a trip to Kampala (never our favourite place to visit) to get a scan of Sarah’s breast.  Luckily all seems to be well, although we may need to carry out some further tests (which may require Sarah to be brave – always a tall order!). 

The Baby Unit has been going through quite a bit of turmoil recently, but we had a good meeting this week and came to some agreements, one of which is assigning a new Head Nurse for the Baby Unit, Cathy.  Having a good head nurse will be crucial in ensuring that things are done well, so we feel very blessed to have Cathy on our team.

New Baby Unit Head Nurse Cathy

We know that the Unit is saving lives, and even just this last week, we successfully resuscitated a baby who refused to start breathing for the first 15 minutes after being born.  This confirms to me that the Baby Unit MUST continue to work, and to work well. 

On a lighter note, after much deliberation, and much enjoyment at reading all your wonderful suggestions, we have decided on two rather splendid names for our rather splendid chickens.  For all you 90s music fans.... come on, there must be at least 3 or 4 of you???.... we are delighted to introduce you to the two newest members of the Crow clan.... MR LOVER MAN and SHABBA.  We hope that choosing non-female names will not influence these chickens to emulate the unfortunately transformation to masculinity experienced by Texas Pete, but if it does.... well, you all know what will happen (chicken and chips!  Yum yum!)

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE!

A return to our previous series of seeing the silver linings...

(1) Someone kindly offers to bless you by cleaning your car.  However, he neglects to mention that in doing so he will crash your car into the side of the garage, wrenching and snapping the bull bar, and prompting a trip to see the mechanic!!  However, on the bright side.... it means we discovered that our rear brakes and shock absorbers were in dangerous condition and needed to be replaced  – handy since we were about to embark on a long journey to Kampala!

(2) You arrive at the doctor’s after a 3 ½ hour road journey, only to be told that the radiologist is off all week.  However, on the bright side... a scan was performed quickly by a technician, and was given to us for free... leaving us with extra money to buy a nice burger lunch and enabling us to escape Kampala that day rather than staying for the night.

(3) You are informed that the power will be off every Friday, Saturday and Sunday all day for the next NINE months!!  However, on the bright side, it may mean that our bills (ludicrously high, since the thrice weekly washing of copious amounts of stinky reusable nappies) may be a little less!  And hey, the power comes back each night, enabling us to do the “wahey, the power’s back” dance many more times than previously.

(4) You return to Uganda to find that the internet, previously quite quick, is now madness-inducingly slow.  However, on the bright side.... on the bright side.... sigh..... nope, I got nothin’!

Who Loves You Baby?!

After a quiet month on the Baby Unit, we have had quite a busy time lately, with many sweet little guests passing through.  These adorable triplets made all our hearts swell as they snuggled up in the warm embrace of our Embrace Warmers!

Sarah and Noah (who, by the way, can now ROLL!!!!) have been spending every Tuesday offering a full days training to Maternity Ward midwives, in order to make the Baby Unit staffing more sustainable.  This comes after sadly losing many of our original nurses to the government hospitals, who are usually able to pay more than our hospital is.   The idea is that the Maternity Nurses will rotate through our Unit, but under the supervision of our lovely new Head Baby Unit nurse Cathy, who will be there full-time.  We also did some training of all the hospital staff on “The Workings of the Baby Unit”, with sweets and prizes in order to ensure undivided attention!

Do you remember the original triplets that first motivated our setting up of the Baby Unit?  Well, Noah and Sarah went to visit Paulo and his family in the village a couple of weeks ago and found him alive and well with his doting grandparents.  We’re hoping to visit again soon, to do some nutrition training with his family, and also to teach them a little about how children develop, and how to make toys to stimulate Paulo’s development.    

After our week of intensive studying on the Celebrating Children Course (during which Noah coped admirably, and enjoyed learning about how to listen to children!), we have since been ploughing through the homework in preparation for next week’s instalment of the course – 2 essays, and 5 assignments is no laughing matter when your time and energy is already stretched by a sweet little weasel!

Finally, we leave you with more lessons and observations from Team Crow in Masaka....

Things we’ve learnt the hard way about parenting #3:

NO, two nappy covers will NOT suffice for a day’s training!  Your baby WILL smell like a bog rat by the end of the day.

You know you’re in Uganda when....

1.     You find that an ant colony has taken up residence inside your computer’s hard drive (bye bye macbook!!)

2.     You feel the urge to physically harm yourself, in order to have an excuse to leave, because the visiting preacher has just entered the fourth hour of his preach (alas, not a joke)!!

3.     You get verbally abused by a motorcycle driver for slowing down and indicating to go right, and then... shock, horror.... actually turning right! (not surprising when the main 2 uses of indicators happen to be (1) to replace the use of headlights when driving at night, and (2) to play a sort of haphazard game of indication roulette, "I'm indicating right, am I going to go right?....maybe....possibly....here I go....LEFT!!)

Pets Reunited!

It has been a tragic fortnight in Casa del Crow, as our chickens staged a mass demise, much to our distress! It means that after 5 months of the relative relaxed pecking, they will now be reunited with our dog Jaffie in that fluffy place in the sky, and no doubt be terrorised by her once more! It appears that Bam Bam’s incessant wanderings had consequences, as she brought back a disease that promptly wiped out our happy chicken clan.  We are obviously particularly sad about our favourite sweet Mr Magoo, whose dramatic exit from the world was most upsetting to witness.  Wahhh!

 

R.I.P Mr Magoo, Petra and Bambam

On a brighter note, we had a great week Celebrating Children on a course run by Viva.  This was week 1 of 4 (with a week of teaching scheduled for every month). We learnt about “understanding the child in context” (including the question: “what does God say about children?”... hint: it’s called Celebrating Children, so what do you reckon??) and “listening to children and child participation”.  It looks like it’s going to be an intensive course, and we are currently peering in despair at the large pile of notes and assignments that we have to plow through, but it was really excellent and relevant.  Noah found it very interesting for the most part, but on occasions objected loudly to being made to sit quietly (leading us to learn the phrase: “Awulikika nga kapa effa”, which means “He sounds like a dying cat”). 

The White Eagle Project is a bit of a busier place these days, as we’ve recently welcomed two sweet and cheeky new boys into the Boys' Home.  Despite having a horrible back-story, these resilient little fellows have definitely added an additional spark of life down in the project, and Tim enjoyed playing football with them (whilst Sarah had a slightly less exhilarating task of poking and prodding them as part of their Annual Health Check).

New Synergy Players in the making!

 

Things we’ve learnt the hard way about parenting....

#2: Suppress your delight at your son’s amazing ability to chow down his crushed antimalarial tablet without fuss.  IT WILL NOT LAST!!!

You know you’re in Uganda when....

1.     You get a lengthy lecture from the police about you having followed “improper procedure” when you call them for help in a dire emergency.

2.     You are unable to open the gate to let your guests in for dinner, as you are busy balancing a sofa mid-air, trying to hustle a precocious bat out of the house.

3.     A sound emanates from the kitchen which seems to be a cat screaming – NOPE, turns out it is just a rat so enormous that it is able to free itself from the rat trap that is meant to ensure its instant death, and escape!

So perhaps we have a new pet after all?