Post for Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Another day, another baby. We had the first time mom get into a squatting position as her baby's heartrate was dropping. I am getting some pretty good muscles supporting the mothers, literally.
I breathe with her. I encourage her to push when the midwives tell me the time is right. I pray silently and then aloud. She is here from Manila for a short time as her husband is in the Army. She is beautiful and strong and delivers a baby boy. Only one friend has accompanied her and did not stay.
The midwives follow all of the protocol and put drops in the baby's eyes after his first breastfeeding. But this mother comes back. Her baby is sick, his eyes are swollen shut. She had not come to us for prenatal care - and she not tell us until the baby got sick that she had been treated for gonorrhea at 2 months pregnant. The disease here has become resistant to antibiotics and is expensive to treat, especially for the indigent and working poor.
There will be all kinds of births here, all kinds of mothers and fathers and babies and family situations. I have come prepared to have my heart broken, to be present with those in pain.
It is harder to forgive those who have caused the pain, but God reminds me that He prepared me for that too, by heaping His forgiveness on me through Jesus--and I don't deserve it either. Please pray for baby Rian George by name. They are not from here so we may never see him again. But he has his little blanket that the women of Creston Church made and prayed over. It is something.
Thank you.
I breathe with her. I encourage her to push when the midwives tell me the time is right. I pray silently and then aloud. She is here from Manila for a short time as her husband is in the Army. She is beautiful and strong and delivers a baby boy. Only one friend has accompanied her and did not stay.
The midwives follow all of the protocol and put drops in the baby's eyes after his first breastfeeding. But this mother comes back. Her baby is sick, his eyes are swollen shut. She had not come to us for prenatal care - and she not tell us until the baby got sick that she had been treated for gonorrhea at 2 months pregnant. The disease here has become resistant to antibiotics and is expensive to treat, especially for the indigent and working poor.
There will be all kinds of births here, all kinds of mothers and fathers and babies and family situations. I have come prepared to have my heart broken, to be present with those in pain.
It is harder to forgive those who have caused the pain, but God reminds me that He prepared me for that too, by heaping His forgiveness on me through Jesus--and I don't deserve it either. Please pray for baby Rian George by name. They are not from here so we may never see him again. But he has his little blanket that the women of Creston Church made and prayed over. It is something.
Thank you.
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