Catching up!!!!

I am so bad at keeping up with this blog! It is definitely busy here! Christina and I finally feel like we are getting the hang of how OB runs. We actually feel like we are helpful and relieve a lot of the workload from others. It is nice to be useful actually. We are running through 4 discharge summaries in 20 minutes!

I have finally given in and taken a couple of babies from the incubatora to hold and cuddle. It is ao hard to be running around busy all the time and never get to hold the babies! So basically I am in love with every baby I see lying around ( which is a lot).

Snuggling with a baby I snatched up from the incubator!

Christina and I with Dr. Hage, a visiting OB/GYN from the States who taught us an incredible amount of information.

This week has been incredibly busy and we lost internet access for a while so I will try to fill everything in. Christina and I are really loving the interns and physicians and nurses we are working with. It has really become a team. We have been able to assist in a lot of procedures but our real goal was to deliver a baby. In Kenya, nurses deliver all normal vaginal deliveries and the nursing students were being graded this week on their abilities so we decided that Friday night we would stay late and see what we could do after everyone went home. Christina and I both ended up delivering our first babies. It was such an awesome experience. I am hoping to get a couple of more deliveries in before I leave. The nursing staff has been so helpful and have taken a lot of time to teach us. 

The 3 "coaches" that are where the vaginal deliveries occur. I caught them when they were empty. There is almost always a line of women waiting for a coach to open up.

Here is the baby that I delivered!! Kiplangat is his name! I was a little excited at the time!

This is me handing the baby I delivered to his mom. She was so happy and grateful. She has had 3 failed pregnancies and this is her first healthy child.

On  Thursday, we decided to leave work a little early and go to an orphanage to spend some time playing. It was so nice to actually relax and act like a kid. We spent a lot of time playing jump rope, soccer, and tossing balls around. I also found a group of kids that loved taking pictures and making silly faces. At the end of the night, they sang a bunch of songs for us. It really refreshed me after a week of long hours.

There was 7 of us who visited the orphanage and we all squeezed into a compact car to get there. You cant see behind Stefanie's head, but there are 3 full grown men in the trunk.

Christina and I having a good time with a couple of the children. 

Christina and I woke up this morning and assisted on rounds to help out the interns. We finished about lunchtime and went for a walk down to the river. We spend most of the day outside.I am trying to catch up on some sleep this weekend so that we can finish this week out strong. Stefanie, Christina, and I leave for Nairobi on Thursday where we are going to stay the night. Stefanie and I head off to Swaziland early Friday morning and will be there by the afternoon. We are very sad to leave Tenwek, but know that there is another adventure waiting for us in Swaziland.

I almost forgot! Christina and I went  to the eye ward this morning to say good bye to Peter. He is finally heading back to Waamba. On Thursday, Stef, Christina, and I made him a batch of brownies and brought him a Swahili Bible. He literally about jumped out of his bed when he saw us. I have been on more mission trips than I can count on 2 hands, but I dont feel like I have ever connected with someone the way I have with Peter. I feel that if the reason for going to Tenwek was so that I could make some kind of difference to Peter, then it was worth it. He immediately opened the Bible and started reading to us in Swahili. I pray that he grows to be a strong Christian man. I hope to return to Kenya in a couple of years with Barny and see how Peter is doing. Michael (who was our main connection between the Samburu people when we did the surgeries and he set everything up for us) came to pick up Peter this morning. We hadnt arrived yet to say good bye and he asked Michael, "Where are the muzungus?!" Which means where are the white people? Of course, we showed up and gave him our hugs. We will keep in contact with Michael to find out how Peter is doing. Stef and Christina took some great pictures for the brownie night with him so hopefully I can steal some of them to show you the joy on his face. He had never had a brownie before, but obviously liked them after he demolished 3 of them.

Here is a picture of us with Peter earlier in the week.