Beth's January 2015 Haiti Trip Day 5

Haiti Day 5 Tuesday  January 27th 2015

Today was an interesting day. I started off working with my student in the post partum unit.  Women here typically get sent home 6 hours after delivery, but if that time is after dark then they stay until morning since it is not safe to travel after dark. So that makes for a lot of morning discharges. The awesome picture to the right, of one of our students assessing a post partum mom and her baby was taken by Ann Schaeffer CNM one of the wonderful volunteers I had the pleasure to work with this week. 

We took care of one woman who was 3 months pregnant who came in yesterday with a fever. Today she had no fever but was very altered mentally. The doctor ended up treating her for malaria, glad I decided to start my malaria treatment before I left.  

Once we finished with all of the post partum discharges we headed over to labor to help out.  One lady who was being induced for severe pre-eclampsia with her 7th baby was so sick. We found her with her IV not running.  They were unable to find the baby's heart beat this morning and had to inform her as she was getting ready to push that her baby had died.  Her lowest blood pressure after delivery of her full term stillborn son and multiple iv medications was 200/130, which is crazy high.   I just pray she doesn't stroke out and die over night.   The saddest thing was in Haitian culture a dead baby is seen as a curse and they don't want to see it or have anything to do with it.  So I wrapped this perfect little 7 pound boy up in a little blue delivery towel and just held him in the hall until they insisted I place him in a discarded cardboard box and sent it off with the janitor to dispose of.  It can be so hard to deal with the cultural differences sometimes, so different from our own, but I know these mom's still morn the loss of their babies, just in different ways.

This afternoon we took the motorbikes over to the Azil feeding center/orphanage.  I love this place even though the kids here break my heart as they are so desperate for attention.  We got to help feed the group of twenty 9-18 month olds who all sat lined up waiting to eat since they only get fed at 10am and 3pm.  We got lots of good cuddle time in there today.  

 

This little guy was climbing all over the place and was full of smiles.  He loved being held!

Some pics I took on our mototaxi ride through Hinche