Beginnings & Endings...

This past week has seen us start our work with Aunt Louise’s School for Children with Disabilities.  This is a “Synergy Away” venture, combining health checks with sports.  The day enabled Tim to play for 2 hours straight – something that always gladdens his youthful heart! 

River of Life Church has been visiting this school for a number of months, doing ministry with them, and also offering physio services to certain children (which is a massive blessing for them), courtesy of our dear friend Sarah Beale. 

Whilst we’re on the topic of Bealey, we also dedicated Noah at church a couple of weeks ago, and the lucky little boy is honoured to have a wonderful Godmother (Bealey) and Godfather (our next door neighbour and all-round star, Tom Lubega).

BYE BYE BRIGITTE & BRUCE

Brigitte, you may remember, is the Canadian nurse with whom Sarah started the Baby Unit back in January 2013 (after many months of plotting, all laced with generous quantities of cake!).  Although she had not been working on the unit herself since last August/September, she made a star appearance in December to help us through a short-term staffing crisis.  She will be greatly missed by us all at the Baby Unit.

And on the Baby Unit....  Just in case anyone is wondering whether God can heal.  You bet he can, and he DID!  Unlike in the UK, here if mothers want to take their babies home early, even if it is a verrrry bad idea, we have to let them.  We get them to “sign against medical advice” and then off they go.  So Maama Sulainah insisted on taking her little premature baby home, promising to keep feeding the baby with expressed breast milk orally, and to return a few days later.  However, when she did return, we were all alarmed to see that she looked really quite ill.  Indeed over the next day, she continued to deteriorate, even to the point of episodically stopping breathing.  Now that we’ve been in Uganda a while, Sarah knows what that usually means.  The game is up.  There were people already praying for this little one back in the UK, and Sarah also prayed that God would do something, because she was certain that the baby wouldn’t survive without a miracle.  We all know that God doesn’t heal every time, and sometimes it’s mystifying why one person is healed, and another is not.  But Baby Sulainah did indeed survive and is continuing to heal – she’s even breastfeeding well these days.  Woo hoooo!

Maybe God knew that we really needed this encouragement on the Baby Unit – we’ve had a number of sick babies die lately, and it does get you down.  But what about next time a mother wants to take her baby home too early?  Tim said: “well maybe you should tell the mothers that their baby will probably die if they go home, and it will be all their own fault”.  Then he paused.... and he said “well, maybe not if it’s due to lacking money or something”.  And therein lies the problem.  It’s nearly ALWAYS about lacking money, or lacking someone to look after your other kids at home.  Whatever the reason, it’s rarely that the mother simply doesn’t care.  From now, we’re planning to be stubborn when mothers try to take babies home who are likely to do badly.  No, we’ll not handcuff them to the Unit... although, actually, that’s not a terrible idea!  But we’ll insist that they stay, and offer to talk to the social worker of the hospital to see if any assistance can be arranged.  Not always an easy task when the hospital is really strapped for cash, but we have to try.