Mini 1 and Mini 2

In the past two weeks we got two more premie babies at our hospital. They were born at the government hospital and came here shortly afterwards. The first one was a boy, and I had a few scary moments trying to get him warm again when his temperature dropped drastically. I held him under the heat lamp in maternity until it had heated up enough for me to lay him down. Meanwhile across the room a lady was about to give birth, so another "nursing assistant" and I delivered her baby, and then I went back to the premie boy and tended to him. At the same time we had a baby in the other room in very critical condition who died about an hour later. Everything seems to happen at once.

It is always a bit of a struggle to get the family totally on board and responsible and active in the care. We don't have enough nurses to get even close, so it's very necessary that the family attend to the needs of their loved one. People seem to have a pretty fatalistic mindset too. Anyway, I spent about two very stressful days in maternity doing intensive care for the baby boy, who weighed close to two pounds at birth. Today the family is doing great with care and feedings and watching the incubator temperature (oh for a thermostat that worked properly!!) I'm very happy with the results and it seems my work has paid off once again. The baby is doing really well.  But if anybody reads this please pray for both of these minis (as my big sis would call them).

Below is a picture of him. When I showed it to the mom she said the photo made him look bigger than he really was, so I took another one with my hand in it too, for comparison. (Keep in mind I don't have very big hands)

The other premie is a girl, a little bit bigger, more than a kilo today, which is good. Her mom has been very attentive and listening to instruction and paying close attention to her baby, which makes me really feel pretty good about that situation, but I'm still checking both babies every day to see how things are going. Since when did I know anything about taking care of premie babies? And here I am trying to teach families how to do the work involved to keep them alive and growing. You learn something new every day!