Today was a great Sabbath! We went to a church today named ¨La Esperanza¨ or ¨The Hope¨. This weekend was a weekend to bring your friends to church, so we brought our neighbor Marta with us. Then, after church she joined us for lunch and Cecilia made Lomo Saltado veggie style! It was so good! This afternoon, Steph and I went to JA at 4pm, the spanish version of AY, and played bible games and enjoyed a good message about the earth not being our permanent home and we have something much better waiting for us. I wish we had been able to go to this church the whole time we have been here. It would have been such a great church family to be a part of and I think we would have gotten to know the community much better. All of them are such great people, and we´ve never left without an invitation for lunch or and invitation to come back for JA. I hope this summer I can start a JA type thing in my church. Some of the games they play include dividing into men verse women and seeing which team knows the most verses by memory, another is where you put a bible on one person´s head and they have to turn the pages to a specified verse with the help of someone standing behind them who can only tell them where to go, but not actually touch the pages. They play a variety of games that involve every age group in the church and it´s an awesome time to fellowship. They close the afternoon service with a short message and then the end of Sabbath is here. Tonight we also played social games. Two of the churches in our area got together tonight to play volleyball and some dancing games and an On the River/On the Bank type of game. For the dancing game the ladies ran around in the center of the circle and then at a certain point during the game you tried to find a partner and then did a little jig and then it was the boys turn to run. It was really funny because half the time Rachel, Steph, and I were without partners because we didn´t understand what we were suppose to be doing. lol. It was a lot of fun hanging out with everyone. I wish I had more time to get to know this church better.
I´m so excited to come home and try it in my church! Hopefully, people decide it´s worth a loss of a nap. lol
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Haystacks and Beer
Well, it’s only 37 days until I begin my Journey home and leave Peru for probably longer than I want to. I’ve been asking myself what I’m going to do with that time. What haven’t I done all year that I should have done? In some ways, I feel as though I have failed, that I didn’t come what I came to do. I didn’t meet enough people, or really impact anybody. But then, I look at myself and the woman that I’ve become. I see what Peru and her people have made of me since I arrived in August. I am still very young, but this year I have also gained experiences that sometimes take people years to learn. God has taken me on a beautiful journey this year, even during the times that I doubted his ability. I have seen women give birth (a miracle by itself, How the Heck do you Survive that!), I put my own dog to sleep, I have sisters for the first time, I became sure of my salvation, I helped build a shower and a house, I learned the secrets to being a good Peruvian woman (mainly the cooking, It’s true!), I’ve been severely disappointed in someone that I put all of my hopes into, surprised at people, and I’ve fallen in love with Peru. There are probably many more things that have shaped me this year, but I know that I’m definitely not the same as I was in August. Praise God for that! I read a verse today, that made me so excited and so hopeful! It’s not a verse that you would normally expect someone to find hope in, but I will try to explain with my limited vocabulary. “dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything”. (2 Corinthians 6:9-10) It’s so amazing! If I give all of my ways to God and let Him direct me, I can go through Hell and still come out smiling and laughing.
I guess now I should explain my chosen title for this blog. I’ve been craving haystacks like crazy this week!!! And turkey bacon. Odd combo, I know, but currently that’s the foods I really wish I could have here. We managed to make Chili the other day, and it actually tasted like Chili and not just a sad attempt at an imitation. Lol. Someone sent us some chili mix powders and we supplied the rest of the seasonings. It was probably one of the best meals I’ve had here as of yet.
This week we were supposed to be in Tingo Maria, but our plans got re-adjusted for us. After our big, long, extremely exhausting medical/research campaign week we received permission to take a little vacation and we decided that we wanted to explore Tingo Maria. Being here at Km 8, we usually only here the rumors of what is going on with our fellow missionaries and Peruvian friends at Km 38. A few days before our trip, we began to hear things that didn’t bode well for our plans. We heard that on the pay day for the Peruvian workers, everyone went out to celebrate at a local restaurant in Campo Verde, and someone ordered a beer and they were drinking. It wasn’t one of the missionaries, but it was still a person that is a part of our family. This goes against the policy of AMOR Projects, and rightly so, and since everyone was out together, they were representing AMOR Projects as a team. Anyway, all of this leads down to how it affected our trip to Tingo Maria. Stephanie, Rachel, and I came down on the Saturday night before we were supposed to leave early on Sunday morning. We had a meeting that night, and it resulted in us being punished as a team, as a family, and we weren’t able to go on our road trip. I have no problem with the results, we are a team and more importantly, a family, and we do rise and fall together. It’s amazing how when selfish, thoughtless act can ruin it for everyone. So, as a result, the three of us have been sitting here at Km 8, not really doing a whole lot. The doctor a that we work with is gone this week, and will be in Lima this Sunday for the elections and we had already informed out patients that we wouldn’t be here this week, so only a handful of people have shown up this week for medical care. Next week we start clinic again and in 5 weeks I will be home! I can’t wait!!
I guess now I should explain my chosen title for this blog. I’ve been craving haystacks like crazy this week!!! And turkey bacon. Odd combo, I know, but currently that’s the foods I really wish I could have here. We managed to make Chili the other day, and it actually tasted like Chili and not just a sad attempt at an imitation. Lol. Someone sent us some chili mix powders and we supplied the rest of the seasonings. It was probably one of the best meals I’ve had here as of yet.
This week we were supposed to be in Tingo Maria, but our plans got re-adjusted for us. After our big, long, extremely exhausting medical/research campaign week we received permission to take a little vacation and we decided that we wanted to explore Tingo Maria. Being here at Km 8, we usually only here the rumors of what is going on with our fellow missionaries and Peruvian friends at Km 38. A few days before our trip, we began to hear things that didn’t bode well for our plans. We heard that on the pay day for the Peruvian workers, everyone went out to celebrate at a local restaurant in Campo Verde, and someone ordered a beer and they were drinking. It wasn’t one of the missionaries, but it was still a person that is a part of our family. This goes against the policy of AMOR Projects, and rightly so, and since everyone was out together, they were representing AMOR Projects as a team. Anyway, all of this leads down to how it affected our trip to Tingo Maria. Stephanie, Rachel, and I came down on the Saturday night before we were supposed to leave early on Sunday morning. We had a meeting that night, and it resulted in us being punished as a team, as a family, and we weren’t able to go on our road trip. I have no problem with the results, we are a team and more importantly, a family, and we do rise and fall together. It’s amazing how when selfish, thoughtless act can ruin it for everyone. So, as a result, the three of us have been sitting here at Km 8, not really doing a whole lot. The doctor a that we work with is gone this week, and will be in Lima this Sunday for the elections and we had already informed out patients that we wouldn’t be here this week, so only a handful of people have shown up this week for medical care. Next week we start clinic again and in 5 weeks I will be home! I can’t wait!!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
What is sleep?
Whew!!! Campaign week is over!!! Out of all of the medical campaigns that we have done this year, this one was probably the hardest for me. It seemed like there was an endless amount of work to be done and most definitely not enough people. Poor Rachel was in the pharmacy quite often by herself, but sometimes had help from others. Jenessa and Wendy did triage for about 300 people per day with the help of a lady from Dr. Matson’s team during the week. We had, at most times, four medical students, and during part of each day Dr. Matson or Dr. Matthews would see patients. I, of course, was holed up in my dental room seeing anywhere from thirty to forty patients a day, more often thirty. Hanna ended up being the Jack-of-all-trades. The first day, she was helping me, the second day she was helping to get consent forms signed, then she ended up testing people for glasses, and finally on the last day she helped to pass out some of the 7,500 worm meds to the surrounding community. We were stretched pretty thin as a team this week, but everything got done that needed to be done!
During this week a team from Eastern Virginia Medical school came down to continue a research project that they have been working on with AMOR for the past three years. The ideal goal is to successfully de-parasite the community of Porto Carrero (where I live) and the adjoining neighborhood Nueva Amazonia. A part of Dr. Matson’s team would walk around the entire neighborhood, which is pretty huge, and survey the families in each home and then ask them for a fecal sample to be tested at the laboratory. Each day we would have people coming in to give us these samples and they would be stored in a trash bag until the end of the day when they would be taken to the lab.
It was such a super busy week! But probably one of the best weeks of my time here in Peru. The team that came down was so much fun to work with and to hang out with. During the week we also had 3 BIRTHS!!!!!! One on late Saturday night, the other early Sunday morning, and the third was born on Thursday! Wow! That was so much work and we only had one set of sheets and towels for birthing!!! We ended up using some of our own sheets and towels for the second birth since it was so close to the first. I´m convince that the full moon we´ve been having is responsible for this! And I´m pretty sure I won´t be an OB/GYN. Births are cool and all, and seeing the new born baby with his mom is awesome, but it´s not quite my thing.
One day while I was doing dental I had a lady come in and ask me to extract all of her teeth except for one. That was twelve teeth in total!!! She was pretty well aged, but I asked her if she was sure and why she wanted them out. She said they hurt her and she didn´t want them anymore. So, I took out eleven teeth, but I couldn´t see anything wrong with the twelfth one so I told her to keep it. lol. That was amazing. This week I also had quite a few five year olds who had teeth that need to be taken out. They were pretty rotted and a few of them couldn´t sleep at night because of the pain. One boy´s face was so swollen that I had to put him on antibiotics and have him come back later in the week. Usually the little ones are very hard to reason with, but all of the young kids I had this week were really brave!!!
All in all this week was amazing. We were swamped with patients, our team was stretched thinner then we thought ever possible, we worked passed sundowm every day for eight days straight, but we survived and had a good time doing it. chau!
During this week a team from Eastern Virginia Medical school came down to continue a research project that they have been working on with AMOR for the past three years. The ideal goal is to successfully de-parasite the community of Porto Carrero (where I live) and the adjoining neighborhood Nueva Amazonia. A part of Dr. Matson’s team would walk around the entire neighborhood, which is pretty huge, and survey the families in each home and then ask them for a fecal sample to be tested at the laboratory. Each day we would have people coming in to give us these samples and they would be stored in a trash bag until the end of the day when they would be taken to the lab.
It was such a super busy week! But probably one of the best weeks of my time here in Peru. The team that came down was so much fun to work with and to hang out with. During the week we also had 3 BIRTHS!!!!!! One on late Saturday night, the other early Sunday morning, and the third was born on Thursday! Wow! That was so much work and we only had one set of sheets and towels for birthing!!! We ended up using some of our own sheets and towels for the second birth since it was so close to the first. I´m convince that the full moon we´ve been having is responsible for this! And I´m pretty sure I won´t be an OB/GYN. Births are cool and all, and seeing the new born baby with his mom is awesome, but it´s not quite my thing.
One day while I was doing dental I had a lady come in and ask me to extract all of her teeth except for one. That was twelve teeth in total!!! She was pretty well aged, but I asked her if she was sure and why she wanted them out. She said they hurt her and she didn´t want them anymore. So, I took out eleven teeth, but I couldn´t see anything wrong with the twelfth one so I told her to keep it. lol. That was amazing. This week I also had quite a few five year olds who had teeth that need to be taken out. They were pretty rotted and a few of them couldn´t sleep at night because of the pain. One boy´s face was so swollen that I had to put him on antibiotics and have him come back later in the week. Usually the little ones are very hard to reason with, but all of the young kids I had this week were really brave!!!
All in all this week was amazing. We were swamped with patients, our team was stretched thinner then we thought ever possible, we worked passed sundowm every day for eight days straight, but we survived and had a good time doing it. chau!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
A baby giving birth to a baby...
So we had another birth on friday night! It was really scary though. The girl was fifteen and had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Her baby almost suffocated! It was a baby having a baby, literally. We couldn´t get her to push hard enough and Cecilia explained to her the her baby would suffocate to death if she didn´t push. And then, since she was such a small little person, Cecilia had to cut her to make room for the baby, but every time she saw the scissors coming she stopped pushing. The cutting wouldn´t have hurt if she was pushing because of all of the chemicals and hormones, but she´s 15, she shouldn´t be doing this. The baby was in the birth canal for 45 minutes, which is extremely dangerous, and when he popped out, por fin, he was completely blue and he definately had more of an alien head than the first baby. We ended up taking the mom and baby to the hospital because we needed to make sure he was okay and the mom tore really bad, but she wouldn´t sit still so that Cecilia could suture her back up so the hospital had to sedate her. Bad deal. We got the baby to cry pretty strongly, and we finally got him warm, but his extremities were still cold when they left. And then the umbilical cord was super fragil and tore really close to the skin, so we panicked a little because he could have bled to death if we hadn´t of been able to clamp it. Cecilia had to clamp it pretty close to the skin, so it´s gonna be painful for the baby and his belly button will probably be messed up. She was just too young. She had no idea how to give birth and how important it was to push! She seemed to want to give up every time it started to hurt a little. As a result her baby was very close to having died. I hope everything turns out okay. The dad was 17 or 18. Wowzers.
Saturday we didn´t end up being able to go to church because the road was impassable, but it ended up being a good thing because a family ended up coming to the clinic for church and steph had had a really good devotional that seemed to peak their interest a lot. It was along the lines of why you should be a christian type stuff. Then, we had lunch with one of our neighbors and then we walked to another neighbors and talked to them a while and they gave us curichi and 3 baby chicks. Unfortunately, the kitchen door got left open last night and pili ate the baby chicks. I feel really bad because they were a gift! We just got them and couldn´t keep them safe for one night. But I guess a dog is a dog. We also got another puppy last night! We named her lady after Lady and the Tramp, her parents are like toy poodle size, so right now she´s a month old and is about the size of a newborn rottweiler. lol. She slept with me last night, and she was starving, but she´s a little young to be eating real food. I got her to eat some mushy dog food, but she still needs milk. I´ll probably buy her some today in Pucallpa.
Saturday we didn´t end up being able to go to church because the road was impassable, but it ended up being a good thing because a family ended up coming to the clinic for church and steph had had a really good devotional that seemed to peak their interest a lot. It was along the lines of why you should be a christian type stuff. Then, we had lunch with one of our neighbors and then we walked to another neighbors and talked to them a while and they gave us curichi and 3 baby chicks. Unfortunately, the kitchen door got left open last night and pili ate the baby chicks. I feel really bad because they were a gift! We just got them and couldn´t keep them safe for one night. But I guess a dog is a dog. We also got another puppy last night! We named her lady after Lady and the Tramp, her parents are like toy poodle size, so right now she´s a month old and is about the size of a newborn rottweiler. lol. She slept with me last night, and she was starving, but she´s a little young to be eating real food. I got her to eat some mushy dog food, but she still needs milk. I´ll probably buy her some today in Pucallpa.
Happy Valentine´s Day!
Blog February 14, 2011
Happy Valentine’s Day! All in all, not really that spectacular of a day, but here Valentine’s Day is also known as Dia de Amistad, Friendship Day. So, if you don’t have a significant other, it is a day to celebrate your friendships. I must admit that today I had an excess of chocolate and I watched the chick flick of all chick flicks, “The Notebook”. It’s been raining pretty hard every night here since Saturday night, which results in us not having very many patients because the roads can be almost impassable if you get enough rain. Our home right now at km 8 has turned itself into a lake, and that makes for very interesting trips to the bathroom which sits at the back of our property. It is a true test of balance and your ability to jump over the raging creeks, in the dark. I’ve managed not to fall yet, but the day is coming, I just know it! The good thing about the rain is that it keeps things a lot cooler around here. It just makes it more difficult to travel. I only had one patient today for dental. A cute little man who needed one tooth and four roots pulled out. By the time I was done he didn’t have much more in his mouth. Sometime this week we are supposed to have a birth with a 15 year-old girl who is having her first baby. I’m a little nervous about it because she is so young, but the sonogram she brought us looks really good. That’s all for this week!
Happy Valentine’s Day! All in all, not really that spectacular of a day, but here Valentine’s Day is also known as Dia de Amistad, Friendship Day. So, if you don’t have a significant other, it is a day to celebrate your friendships. I must admit that today I had an excess of chocolate and I watched the chick flick of all chick flicks, “The Notebook”. It’s been raining pretty hard every night here since Saturday night, which results in us not having very many patients because the roads can be almost impassable if you get enough rain. Our home right now at km 8 has turned itself into a lake, and that makes for very interesting trips to the bathroom which sits at the back of our property. It is a true test of balance and your ability to jump over the raging creeks, in the dark. I’ve managed not to fall yet, but the day is coming, I just know it! The good thing about the rain is that it keeps things a lot cooler around here. It just makes it more difficult to travel. I only had one patient today for dental. A cute little man who needed one tooth and four roots pulled out. By the time I was done he didn’t have much more in his mouth. Sometime this week we are supposed to have a birth with a 15 year-old girl who is having her first baby. I’m a little nervous about it because she is so young, but the sonogram she brought us looks really good. That’s all for this week!
Monday, February 14, 2011
The life of a 2 year old
Surgery must be one of the most amazing things to be witness to, let alone be able to assist in a procedure! I had my first opportunity to assist in a surgery today! There was a little girl who came to our clinic that was having problems breathing because of a tumor that was obstructing her airway. It was a very sad case. She is two years old, and she needed this surgery to remove the tumor, but her family did not have the money to pay for this surgery. It was vitally important because otherwise it would eventually close off her entire airway and she would die. Among the eight of us missionaries, we came up with the $300 dollars that it would cost for the surgery. The surgeon we found is a specialist in the head and neck area, and he agreed to do the surgery at a cheaper price. The only thing that we paid for was the anesthesia and the cost of using a room for surgery. Before the surgery, I was elected to be the surgeon’s assistant, which in and of itself was pretty cool but terrifying at the same time. They sedated Celeste a little bit before they brought her back to put her under the anesthesia. She had been in the hospital for 10 days previously, so she definitely had a healthy fear of anyone in the medical profession, and she fought pretty good when you came near her. When they brought her back into the room, I was the only person who she recognized and so I had the responsibility of keeping her calm while they tried to find a vein large enough for the IV. After she was asleep they used an instrument to spread her mouth wide and the doctor began the surgery. I didn’t do very much during the surgery, but I did hold the tongue back so that he could see, and I was holding the suction to keep the area as blood free as possible. It was pretty cool to sit there and watch that. The hardest part came when Celeste started to wake up. She was very disoriented, confused, and scared. Her mom was looking in at her from outside the window, and she started crying because she didn’t know what was wrong and she couldn’t do anything for her baby. Celeste woke up crying strongly, and she threw up a little bit. When mom was finally allowed to come in, that helped a lot to calm Celeste down, and then after we were released we rushed the family to the clinic to administer medicine for the pain that Celeste would soon feel from the surgery. The surgeon pulled out a lot of tumor from that poor child´s neck. There was still a lot more to pull out, but he stopped because he thought it was cancerous, possibly lymphoma, and she really needed to go to Lima to get it taken care of. He took out enough for us to get it analyzed to see what it really is, but he´s pretty sure whatever he took out will grow back and she´ll have to go to Lima. For now, though, she can breathe better and mom doesn´t have to wake her up when she´s sleeping to make sure that she is breathing. We should get the results back today. Life seems so unfair to give a two-year-old a problem so difficult as this. She hasn´t been on this earth for very long and she´s already fighting for her life. We´re praying that everything turns out, and hopefully she doesn´t have to go to Lima because I don´t know where the family would get the money for all of that care.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Babies and such
January 11, 2011
I woke up with my back aching like it usually does after a long day of doing extractions. Lol. I couldn’t do it for a living, but for now dental is okay. There were two screaming children and a crying child. My worst nightmare when it comes to doing an extraction. I got a little bit of anesthesia into the two children before they starting screaming, but the poke of the needle was too much for them. I felt really bad. I tried to make it hurt as little as possible, but they were scared to start out with. Tomorrow, their parents are going to bring them back and hopefully I can try a different technique that might hurt less. Today, in total, there were 38 cleanings and 10 extractions. I couldn’t have done it today without Rebecca’s help with the cleanings. Everyone is starting to get tired, and by the end of the week we are all going to just crash! One of the little boys that I met yesterday came back today to give me a little flower and a small vile of perfume. A little bit later, he asked me to be his godmother. At first I didn’t understand the word for grandmother, and I told him so, and he went to get someone who would understand him. I felt so honored that he would ask, but it would be impossible since I live in the states and I kind of think that a godmother should have known you for a little longer than one day. I had a second little boy decide that I was going to be his godmother too. Hehe.
January 14, 2011
I cut my finger yesterday trying to open up a vile to prepare a shot for someone. It slashed right across the knuckle on my middle finger. Hanna had to do dental for me today. She was so awesome! I know she was really nervous, and I talked her through the morning extractions, but she had it down to a science for the afternoon! She did 13 or 14 patients, and on my longest day this week, I think I only did 15. Praise the Lord that she trained with us or there wouldn’t have been dental today!
January 21, 2011
I saw a baby being born this morning!! And I helped with the delivery! I have never even seen a birth on an educational video in science class! The mom and the dad came around 5:30am this morning. We were still sleeping, but they managed to wake us up with a “Doctora, doctora!” and a “oooo!” The mom had been having contractions all night, and when Cecilia had seen her yesterday she told her to come when she was having three contractions within ten minutes. We waited a total of about two hours for little Diamela to make her entrance into the world. The mother also has a five-year-old son, which made this her second child. The parents didn’t know the sex of the baby, but I guess the son told his mom yesterday that it was going to be a girl. And it was. The first thing we did was to sit the mother in the birthing chair, and while Cecilia checked the cervix, Rachel and I started getting the Consultorio room ready for the birth and Rachel also attempted to get an IV started in between contractions. Rachel had a little bit of a hard time because the contractions were starting to come faster and harder. I boiled water, haha, just like you read about in the Little House on the Prairie type books. The mom was a very strong lady! It was and wasn’t what I expected to see at a birth. During the contractions she didn’t ever scream or cry out, but once, and it was more like a grunt. She was obviously in pain, but you wouldn’t ever know how much pain she was in. All of the things I observed, of course, are coming through the eyes of someone who has absolutely no idea what it is like to give birth. Since it was going to be another hour before the baby came we started getting ready for the day, brushing our teeth and stuff and I decided to eat a granola bar because I was starving and I remembered my dad saying that you should eat something before a surgery to help nausea, and I thought that would apply here. I definitely did not want to miss out on this! The contractions soon became one or two every minute and they were coming A LOT stronger than before. Pretty soon it was time for her to start pushing, and very soon after we saw a little tuft of hair. Within three pushes una mujercita, Diamela Lisbeth Falcón Barrera made her appearance in the world at 7:59am on January 21, 2011, weighing 3.800 kg, and 50 cm long. Quickly, we moved to making sure she was breathing, and I was responsible for using a bulb syringe to suck out all of the baby gunk out of her mouth and nose. It was a little nerve-wrecking because after the first try, she didn’t cry, so I suctioned stuff out of her throat a second and third time and she still wasn’t crying! She started to turn a little blue and finally after the fourth try she let out a small cry. That small cry quickly got stronger as we carried her over to the table to clean her off after cutting the umbilical cord. Rachel and I set to cleaning her up while Cecilia waited for the placenta. The baby gunk didn’t come off of Diamela very easily. We spent quite awhile cleaning her up and finally we were able to dress her and present her to mom and dad. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen! I know it hurts a lot, but what a miracle and what an experience. God designed us in a truly marvelous way!
I woke up with my back aching like it usually does after a long day of doing extractions. Lol. I couldn’t do it for a living, but for now dental is okay. There were two screaming children and a crying child. My worst nightmare when it comes to doing an extraction. I got a little bit of anesthesia into the two children before they starting screaming, but the poke of the needle was too much for them. I felt really bad. I tried to make it hurt as little as possible, but they were scared to start out with. Tomorrow, their parents are going to bring them back and hopefully I can try a different technique that might hurt less. Today, in total, there were 38 cleanings and 10 extractions. I couldn’t have done it today without Rebecca’s help with the cleanings. Everyone is starting to get tired, and by the end of the week we are all going to just crash! One of the little boys that I met yesterday came back today to give me a little flower and a small vile of perfume. A little bit later, he asked me to be his godmother. At first I didn’t understand the word for grandmother, and I told him so, and he went to get someone who would understand him. I felt so honored that he would ask, but it would be impossible since I live in the states and I kind of think that a godmother should have known you for a little longer than one day. I had a second little boy decide that I was going to be his godmother too. Hehe.
January 14, 2011
I cut my finger yesterday trying to open up a vile to prepare a shot for someone. It slashed right across the knuckle on my middle finger. Hanna had to do dental for me today. She was so awesome! I know she was really nervous, and I talked her through the morning extractions, but she had it down to a science for the afternoon! She did 13 or 14 patients, and on my longest day this week, I think I only did 15. Praise the Lord that she trained with us or there wouldn’t have been dental today!
January 21, 2011
I saw a baby being born this morning!! And I helped with the delivery! I have never even seen a birth on an educational video in science class! The mom and the dad came around 5:30am this morning. We were still sleeping, but they managed to wake us up with a “Doctora, doctora!” and a “oooo!” The mom had been having contractions all night, and when Cecilia had seen her yesterday she told her to come when she was having three contractions within ten minutes. We waited a total of about two hours for little Diamela to make her entrance into the world. The mother also has a five-year-old son, which made this her second child. The parents didn’t know the sex of the baby, but I guess the son told his mom yesterday that it was going to be a girl. And it was. The first thing we did was to sit the mother in the birthing chair, and while Cecilia checked the cervix, Rachel and I started getting the Consultorio room ready for the birth and Rachel also attempted to get an IV started in between contractions. Rachel had a little bit of a hard time because the contractions were starting to come faster and harder. I boiled water, haha, just like you read about in the Little House on the Prairie type books. The mom was a very strong lady! It was and wasn’t what I expected to see at a birth. During the contractions she didn’t ever scream or cry out, but once, and it was more like a grunt. She was obviously in pain, but you wouldn’t ever know how much pain she was in. All of the things I observed, of course, are coming through the eyes of someone who has absolutely no idea what it is like to give birth. Since it was going to be another hour before the baby came we started getting ready for the day, brushing our teeth and stuff and I decided to eat a granola bar because I was starving and I remembered my dad saying that you should eat something before a surgery to help nausea, and I thought that would apply here. I definitely did not want to miss out on this! The contractions soon became one or two every minute and they were coming A LOT stronger than before. Pretty soon it was time for her to start pushing, and very soon after we saw a little tuft of hair. Within three pushes una mujercita, Diamela Lisbeth Falcón Barrera made her appearance in the world at 7:59am on January 21, 2011, weighing 3.800 kg, and 50 cm long. Quickly, we moved to making sure she was breathing, and I was responsible for using a bulb syringe to suck out all of the baby gunk out of her mouth and nose. It was a little nerve-wrecking because after the first try, she didn’t cry, so I suctioned stuff out of her throat a second and third time and she still wasn’t crying! She started to turn a little blue and finally after the fourth try she let out a small cry. That small cry quickly got stronger as we carried her over to the table to clean her off after cutting the umbilical cord. Rachel and I set to cleaning her up while Cecilia waited for the placenta. The baby gunk didn’t come off of Diamela very easily. We spent quite awhile cleaning her up and finally we were able to dress her and present her to mom and dad. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen! I know it hurts a lot, but what a miracle and what an experience. God designed us in a truly marvelous way!
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