Angelo

Just a couple of days ago we had the most emotionally challenging birth I have been to yet...a girl who had just turned 14 walked into the clinic in labor. She was a rape victim, her father was the one who had impregnated her. This little girl was very unhappy and scared when she walked in. She had rejected her baby for the entire pregnancy and was not eating or taking care of herself, therefore she only looked about 6 months pregnant but was actually 9. She was planning on giving the baby away to a neighbor once it was born, we explained to her and the family that if she was to give up the baby, it wouldn’t erase what had happened to her, and it might even add more trauma, because she would always remember the day her little baby was born...ect. Anyways, despite the odds of this being a high risk case we decided the best thing for her would be to let her stay here and give her the most safe, gentle, loving birth experience as possible; so we admitted her. During the labor we had the lights down low and we took turns one at a time supporting this girl along with family members she wanted with her. We were all quietly praying for her and this baby since the moment she walked in. At first during contractions it seemed she was re-living her rape experience, she would just cry. But she was a tough little girl, and started coping very well after awhile. She was only in labor for about 7 hours, and pushed for a half an hour. Once the little(4lb, 3oz) otherwise healthy baby boy was born, we put him skin to skin right on his mama, he cried vigoursly right from the start. I guided the mothers hand to her baby and said, "look at your baby, isn’t he just so cute!" But she just checked out. She fell into a sleeping state, and even though she had minimal blood loss from the delivery, by her vitals it seemed she was going into some sort of shock. We were thinking it was emotional? It never got to the point of being dangerous or anything, we just stayed right with her keeping an eye on her vitals, and keeping the baby skin to skin/nursing. We would gently wake her up every so often making sure she was still responsive, and have her take a drink or something. It wasn’t until after that first hour that she actually came into the present realizing reality. She was eating some soup meanwhile the baby was still nursing, and every once in a while she would look down at him, I think in disbelief that she actually had a real live baby in her arms. Slowly but surely she started bonding with that baby through the night and was interacting with him, and responding to his needs; she fell in love with him. By morning she had decided to keep the baby and raise him with the support of her family. Overnight she had transformed from a hurt scared little girl, into a woman; into a mother. When we were filling out paper work getting ready to discharge her and the baby, we asked what they were going to name him, the family said, “oh, we don’t have a name yet,” but all of a sudden the new mama piped up and said, I will name him Angelo, which means Angel.

I have permission from the family to share these pictures...

Me and the other student Megan helping mother breastfeed
and "protecting the space"

She is helping her lil baby latch on, he is such a good little nurser! 

I totally fell in love with her and that baby!

Angelo

Manila

Wow! It has been a crazy couple of days. I am moved here to Manila, and the first day I arrived I turned on my computer to find that it decided to not work any more! I kind of freaked...but it is finally fixed, thankfully. Anyways living here in Manila actually isn’t all that much different from Olongapo. I mean I am definitely living more of the Philippine lifestyle...no flushing toilet, no water pressure, ants, cockroaches, and geckos are part of the building no matter how clean we keep it, and last but not least nothing is convenient. But this is all part of living in the Philippines, right? I have been here for 4 days now, and we have already had 2 births! I am living here in the clinic, currently there is another wonderful student here named Megan with me who has been able to show me around and teach me the way things are done here. The other day we went out to eat at a really awesome restaurant called the coconut house where all of the food, drinks, and dishes had coconut incorporated into it someway or another. It was sooo yummy and unique. but, Megan is leaving in a week and then it will be just me living here in the clinic. We do prenatals every Wednesday and Friday, where we start by teaching a childbirth education class, then do the checkups. It seems to me, the main clientele here are teenagers, our youngest patient is 13 years old. My heart totally goes out to these moms and it is very hard not to fall in love with them and their babies! I am practicing my tagalog alot, because I will most likely be the one here who answers the door in the middle of the night to a laboring woman, and I need to be able to communicate with her. The midwife Gerlene who is my preceptor and owner of the clinic, just lives walking distance from here, and then there are 2 other staff midwives who rotate being here. So, I hope I wont be too lonely. It is definitely going to take me awhile to become confident enough to travel around in Manila on my own, I mean, I got lost in Olongapo, and Manila is just so much busier. As my friends and family know, I have never had a good sense of direction...but, I feel like that is going to change very soon :-) I hope all of you back home are doing well, and I will post pics of the clinic and Manila ASAP, I am alot busier here than I was in Olongapo so I haven't had the time to take many pics yet.

"I've heard there are troubles of more than one kind, some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've brought a big bat. I'm already you see, now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"
-Dr. Suess

Would you like a Boca?

When Jen and I were waiting for our buntis(pregnant woman) to come for a prenatal checkup in Mercy land yesterday morning, the neighbor asked me if I would like a Boca(coconut). I said sure, thinking she was going to just give me a piece of coconut she had or something, But she asked me to come with her to get the Boca. She led me to a young couples house, told them I wanted a boca, and the young man literally climbed up the coconut tree with his bare hands and feet and chopped a boca down for meJ It was very fun to watch, and I videod it just for you guys!… but I was holding the camera in a vertical angle and don't know how to flip the video the right way :( oh well, its still fun to watch...

The coconut was very yummy! And the coconut water that was inside was way better tasting than when I have drank it from a coconut in the states...it was naturally slightly carbonated, sweet, and coco nutty!

Right before he jumps on the tree like spider man hehe!

Coconut trees are so pretty, and did you know that coconuts are actually very large, shiny and green in their true form...

Change of Plans...

Well, while Cecille and Emelda are packing up and moving into the temporary birth center we have set up here, I will be getting ready to move to…Manila! Yep, that’s right, plans here can change in a blink of an eye, it’s the fun part about living in the developing world…I will be moving to Manila in about 2 weeks and staying for 3 months apprenticing with a Filipina midwife who has a VERY busy birth clinic down there. Moving to Manila now while the birth center here is being built and clientele established, is giving me the chance to immediately start catching babies getting the experience I came here for. Manila is about a 3 hour bus ride from Olongapo, and one of the largest cities in the world. To tell you the truth, I am a little nervous, because I just got used to living here in Olongapo, and I feel like moving to Manila will be like culture shock all over again, but I know that it will be good for me; and I am definitely learning what being flexible actually meansJ(gotta be flexible in order to be a good midwife!) I will also miss everyone here during the time that I am gone, but I will be back in Olongapo after the three months in Manila just in time to jump into all of the action here. Manila is definitely bigger, busier, and more polluted. Also, Manila does not have as many “Americanized” products that I am able to find in this area. the reason being the US military was based here for a long time making in impact on what food and other products were sold...So, I won’t be able to have my little American treats that remind me of homeL... but, I am excited to get busy and start catching babies!      

A Day Out On My Own

Oh my Goli! (oh my goodness in tagalong) where do I even began…First off, I am feeling much better(thanks for all the prayers!) So my day began with this morning doing checkups on our moms in Iram, and coming home realizing I really needed to go grocery shopping. Since I have been here for 3 weeks, I decided that I should be confident enough to go out on my own for the very first time and go grocery shopping myself, right? Boy was that a mistake! Now, in order to get to Royal (the grocery store) I have to take the brown jeepney with the white top to the market(15 min. ride) then hop on a yellow jeepney to the Subic Bay gate(15 min ride) then walk to this parking lot and hop on a bus which takes me to Royal(5 min ride). Easy enough, right? Well I got to the grocery store just fine and was all proud of myself(I even stopped in Starbucks, it reminded me soo much of home, I almost cried!) but on my back, well, that is a total different story….So, I was on the yellow jeepney needing to get off to switch to the brown jeepney with the white top, when I totally realized that I had no clue when to get off to get to their terminal. By this time, I knew I had already totally missed it, because I had been in this yellow jeepney for quite a while, and he was driving in an area I did not even recognize at all. To make things worse, it was also getting very dark outside! So I prayed that the driver would know english and surprisingly he knew enough to understand that I needed to get to the brown Jeepney with the white top. He informs me that we had passed that stop a long time ago! Ugh! Right after he tells me that he would turn around and take me to where I needed to go, I got a random txt message from Vicki saying “hey Alyssa, where are you!?  How would you like to go to a birth right now!” Well, of course I told her I would love too, and I would try to get there ASAP! While thinking to myself, “Shoot, what a great day Alyssa to think that you were able to go out on your own!” LOL!  Traffic was crazy, but I told the jeepney driver to drive fast because I needed to get to a birth! So, I finally got to a brown jeepney with a white top to take me to Kalapati and arrived in this health center right when the mom was pushing, like 10 minutes before the baby was born! I was able to assist this “government” midwife for the delivery and after. To fill you in about this midwife…Our Mercy In Action team had introduced ourselves to her awhile ago and she informed us that if she had a birth she would call us so that I could assist her, she is also open to learning some new things from us to improve her quality of care... The baby was a girl, weighing about 6 ½ pounds, which is considered “big” here in the Philippines, she was healthy and oh so cute! And the mom did so well. I was able to initiate breastfeeding and basically I wasable to "protect” the baby from being taken away from the mother hehe… It was great! I stayed there for about an hour and a half after the baby was born, and then had to get my groceries in the refrigerator, so I said my goodbyes and took a tricy home. Wow, what a day! 

Yes, Starbucks has made it all the way to the Philippines!! 

So happy!! Every sip reminded me of home!...okay maybe I am a little too
excited about this whole Starbucks thing hehe

Mom, dad, and their new baby girl...my first birth in the Philippines!

sick:-(

As most all of you have heard, I have been under the weather these past couple days. I am feeling a little bit better today mostly now just have sinus congestion, headache, fatigue, and cough. No more fever or throwing up, so thats good. Thankyou to all who are praying/sending good thoughts over my way. Yesterday I missed doing prenatals with the midwives in the landfill area, but in a way glad I didn't go because when the midwives got back they told me that they went to one of our patients houses, and her deceased grandfather who had apparently passed away 3 days beforehand was still laying there in her house! Wow! I don't know how I would of reacted. What do you do in that kind of situation? We will check up on her again next week because she has very high blood pressure, and at 18 weeks pregnant we were still not able to hear a baby's heart beat. She is definitely in my prayers.

Today I was supposed to go help Cecille and Joks paint the temporary birth center, but they had to go do it without me. I will be moving in there within the next couple of days and do not know when/if I will be able to get internet connection. The internet guys here are like the cable guys in the states, where you wait at home all day for them, and then they don't even show up! I hope all of you back at home are doing well, and I miss you guys! For some reason, me laying here sick makes me miss my family even more.  

Moving soon...

Homebirth was just recently outlawed here in the Philippines, the thinking behind outlawing it was, if they make every women go to the hospital or clinic to have her baby, the infant and maternal mortality rates would hopefully go down in this country. But, the thing is the hospital and clinic fees are too expensive for most families, and many women do not want to go to the hospital. And now since the law is midwives here cannot attend homebirths, the moms just deliver the baby on their own without anyone. As you can see this law is not working out as planned here. And since us midwives have been doing prenatal checks 3 times a week we have some moms that are coming to us who’s due dates are very soon, and we cannot deliver them in their home. This is why we need to get a clinic going ASAP. Vicki, the director of Mercy In Action found a cute little house that we can convert into a temporary birth clinic until the building of the main birth center is done. I will be moving into this temporary clinic with Cecille and Emelda( Filipina  midwives) probably next week. All morning today we were cleaning the entire house inside and out, and we will be painting this weekend, then moving our stuff in. It is not far from where I am living now, probably a 12 minute Jeepney ride. It is actually on the same dirt road that one would take to get to Mercy Land, which is where the birth center is being built. Our Mercy In Action team has been making more friends with the locals, we are getting more mothers coming to us for care, and people here are starting to trust us more it seems...we just need to keep on praying!  

Laundry day

This chore is much more time consuming and complicated here…First, I have to put my dirty clothes in the washing machine than fill it up with water from a hose and add soap. Now, the philippinos call it a washing machine, but its more like a big basin that will swish around your clothes in soapy cold water for about 10 minutes. Once my clothes were throughouly “swished” I had to turn the knob to "drain" which drains all of the water out through a hose, then I grab my soaking wet laundry put it in a basket to take to the shower where I have a big and small bucket full of yet again cold water. I put my clothes in the big bucket and let them soak for awhile, then hand wash them before I dip them into the smaller bucket of water to rinse the article. After I am done with that whole process I take my laundry and put it into the dryer (which is like a salad spinner, and spin dries the clothing for 5 minutes) once that is done I hang up my still wet laundry on the clothesline to fully dry, and of course for everyone to see all my pretty clothes hahaha…now if that process isn’t hard enough already I forgot to mention that the washing/spinning machine is located out back in an alleyway type thing that is full of mosquitoes. So, I have to douse myself in “off” every time I go out there, and then when it is time for me to get my clothes off the line, I never come out of it without at least one bite, because for some reason the little buggers love hanging out inside my clothing and start going crazy attacking me when I shake my clothes to get them off and put them in my basket to bring inside…Mom: when I get back home I wont mind doing laundry anymore, because in America it truly is such an easy choreJ At least I don’t have to handwash my clothes with rocks in a creek…

Filling up the "washing machine" with nice cold hose water

done being in "washing machine" now time to soak

scrub, scrub, scrub

time to rinse

now time for the dryer/spinner

hanging up clothes to fully dry

yep, my clothes are ready for mosquitoes now lol