First week in the hospital. . .

I got up with the girls, combed their hair into pigtails, and drank my coffee. Then, I walked back into my room, nervously rustling through the clothes in my closet.  I have spent the first month here arranging our home and learning Swahili as fast as I can – and that day, I would walk into the hospital for the first time with my white coat.

New babies, new mamas, new nurses, new residents, new rules – the next piece of a new life.

The day started typically, with 25 babies under our team’s care. The medical officers and residents scrambled to finish their notes and gather data. I watched, took mental notes, and smiled as Dr. Imma  Barasa deftly organized the chaos.

Babies in the left corner, born 3 months too soon, thriving on oxygen jetting through water bubbles and slowly needing less and less of our support as they declared to us that they would fight.

Babies along the right wall who had decided to come two months too soon, wiggling in their incubators and mother’s diligently pouring milk into small tubes that stretched down their nose to their bellies.

Babies wearing cloth sunglasses, sleeping calmly under the blue lights that melted the bilirubin from their blood and others that are growing daily, fighting infection, awaiting surgery.

We analyzed numbers, changed fluids, changed antibiotics and flipped the blue lights off and on as the lab results returned. I started to unfile bits of knowledge from long nights in the NICU and nursery.

Then, a nurse arrived at the door, holding a lifeless tiny baby and placing her onto the only empty bed – we sprang to action as the nurses assembled the necessary equipment, the intern began chest compressions and I held the infants chin and mouth while Dr. Imma bagged the baby. A grimace, a kick, and then a cry as the babe realized she was in the world.

Moments later, another nurse arrived suddenly at the door and called us to maternity where a baby had been born in normal labor, but was not breathing or moving. I followed the resident’s lightning sprint around 3 corners, and we held the baby, cleaning him, tilted his neck, and blew air into his mouth – I worked deftly, with memory of things I have been taught well.  I felt at the base of the umbilical cord and smiled. The heart rate slowly quickened and the baby took his first gasp for air and cried. Minutes later, we returned the newborn to his mom, alert and strong.

We regrouped in nursery, only to be called to the OR for an emergency c-section. Imma looked at me, “Can you go?”  “Of course,” I replied, with more certainty than I felt – and the clinical officer and I walked quickly to the OR where I donned a cap and new shoes and a gown and waited for this tiny baby, 3 months to early, and prayed for her to breathe. She entered the world perfectly tiny, not quite ready to be born. And again the MO Robert and I pushed breath into her mouth and felt for her tiny heartbeat, and after 5 long minutes, she took her first breath. And then she cried, batted away the mask and opened her eyes wide. The resident laughed as I wished the tiny Kenyan Happy Birthday.

The week continued at this rapid, welcome pace. We welcomed more preemies, more babies with fever, another infant born with his intestines outside his body with 12 fingers and 12 toes. I ultrasounded that baby’s heart and sent it to Dr. Romp in Alabama so we could help guide the infant’s prognosis. I wrote Chris and asked her send bags and masks donated from Children’s to friends in Seattle coming to Kijabe next week so we could replenish the stock of only 4 remaining in our hospital and continue to give life giving breaths. And I learned and taught and organized and laughed.

I woke up each morning a little less rested, but refreshed. I felt like myself again, so thankful for the privilege to do what I love. It is an amazing thing to be the hands that coax life into a newborn baby, to kneel with a mother and help her understand her child’s battle, to work as a team and watch differences fade in common purpose.  I know that the days ahead will hold heartbreak as some babies cannot be coaxed to breathe and others enter the world too fragile to survive. But this week was a week of small victories and sacred moments – of new wonder and quiet gratitude in the midst of chaos.

First day picture (as I ran back because I forgot my stethoscope. . .)