Tuesday day 4 (Maternity Adventures)

          Today our team went to the local Maternity hospital in Carrefour.  When we arrived the administrator of the hospital took us up to the labor and delivery ward. We were taken back to where there was a Haitian woman in active labor.  The labor room was very different than a hospital in the U.S. There are not separate rooms for the mothers, but rather one room with partitions between the beds.  Since there is no such thing as HIPPA here in Haiti, there were about 25 people at the end of the bed watching.  The nurse in charge was very commanding and efficient in her care to get the woman to cooperate and comply.  The woman denied any pain medication, and within minutes she gave birth to a baby girl.  It was a huge blessing to be able to have the opportunity to witness the birth of new life in Haiti!  The baby was laid on the mother while the nurse cut the umbilical cord, then they whisked the baby off to be assessed at the neonatal ward.  The mother was then put into a room to be monitored and cared for.  After seeing the delivery we went through the rest of the ward and talked to the new and impending mothers.  The hospital also had a urgent care center where we went to next.  It was very slow at first, they did not have any patients but just as we prepped to help them roll gauze a woman came in with her child who fell and hit her head and was bleeding.  The Haitians in the urgent care immediately started handing materials to Adam and told him to care for her.  Adam jumped right in and looked at the child's head, because the area was full with hair the area needed to be shaved.  Having only a scalpel to shave with Adam let Redgi shave the little girls head around the wound.  We then cleaned the would with Hydrogen peroxide and Betadine, and bandaged it up.  The mother was handed a prescription and they where on their way.
           After lunch we headed to a school where Hearts United with Haiti give English lessons.  Today was their first day of classes for this term and the students of varying ages and degrees of understanding; where expecting the normal orientation day, ended up with the chance to practice their English with us.   We split them up into four groups with both advanced and beginner students in each.  We were able to sit and converse with them for a little over a hour and learn more about each other but most importantly so that they were able to practice actually using the English they had learned.

Being His Hands and Feet,
Thomas Kublin