Well Baby Clinic and Reflections

Today was my first day helping out at the well baby clinic. I headed down at about 8:30 this morning, and met up with Karen ( my neighbor, and a nurse who has been here for a long time). She showed me to the clinic, and I met Silvia,

Silvia and me--you can see the baby's medical notebook opened to the growth chart where they can track his/her growth and see if it's normal or not.

 a nurse who would call a baby’s name (from a little booklet that everyone has for their medical records.) The mom would bring in the baby, undress him or her, then I would help place the baby in a little sling that is reminiscent of those plastic baby swings that look like a pair of underware. 

Getting two babies ready for weighing with their moms:

(above)Here's a teeny, tiny baby in the tiniest sling available

Here's a happy little baby also getting ready. I think this one was a boy.

Then we’d hang the baby from the scale—this is the type of scale that you see people stick a slab of steak on in movies to weigh it. And here I was hanging up little babies.

Angry hanging baby. It was kinda hard to smile next to a screaming kid knowing I could take him down if I weren't getting a picture taken. Her mom didn't seem to mind though. The moms loved seeing the pictures of their babies on my camera afterwards too, which was neat.

This is probably my favorite picture from Gabon. This little girl is adorable, and she seems to be having a good time too!

 

I learned how to figure out what the babies weighed and then I’d tell Sylvia in French—cinq kil deux cent (5 kil. 200g). Then she’d write it down and give the notebook to some other nurses who would figure out if the baby was ready for more vaccinations and then they’d notate that in the book.

 

It was fun helping. I’ve never held so many babies in such a short time! Some were big, and probably getting close to one years old, others were as young as just a few weeks. I felt a little awkward about putting the tiny babies into a sling and watching them hang there. They looked uncomfortable. And their little heads would sorta droop over. Since one of the one of the main things that strikes me about babies is the comment “Watch the head! Watch the head!” It felt wrong to not hold their head or something. But they all seemed fine.

 

African babies don’t seem to get a lot of really gentle treatment like many American babies do, this is not to say that they are abused, but their durability and resilience is certainly not under appreciated. They get tied to mom’s back and hauled around, head flopping a bit sometimes. A common game, instead of peek-a-boo is cover the babies face with your hand making loud noises and gently shake the face around. I think I’d be terrified if that were me, but they seemed pretty used to it.

 

After the babies had been weighed the stacked up all the notebooks and called them in again by name—this time for vaccinations—there was something funny, in a sense, about watching those little babies sitting on their mommy’s laps, smiling and laughing and looking around, totally clueless of what was about to happen to them. Some would cry as soon as the cottonball soaked in some kind of cleaner touched their skin, others wouldn’t cry until the needle poked them, and others waited until the injection. Only one baby didn’t cry at all for one vaccination, but when he got the second he started wailing.

 

I noticed how they had different screams and cries—but the message was always the same—they were not happy and this should not have happened. The funny thing is that it is good, and that they will be better off with that little poke than with the diseases they could get otherwise.

 

It made me think of how we will sit and talk to God, happy as pie, but sometimes when something happens that we can’t understand, something that seems awful and painful and like it shouldn’t happen we scream just like those babies. We know God, just like those babies know their mothers, and we know that He wouldn’t let something happen for us unless there was a good reason for it, but when pain strikes and feel that poke we always get upset and forget how good he has been to us. Of course, the hardest part is probably in the times that we can’t see the good. Those babies aren’t going to understand that they are getting protection from all kinds of worse dangers. They will never understand why that happened (except maybe a long, long ways down the road when they’re grown up). That’s the same for us, there are some things we’re just never going to understand at all. We look at the situation and think, this is painful, this is hard, and there is nothing good about it at all, but if we remember who our God is—a loving caring God, who has only the very best in mind for us—and if we remember all the times when we’ve seen what looks like a bad situation turn into a good one, then we can rest assured that our God who loved us yesterday and made our bad days turn into good ones will do the exact same thing today, and we can count Him to do it again tomorrow. And one day, maybe we will understand, maybe he’ll show us somewhere down the road in this life or the next. But since we know Him, we know it’s always for a reason, and that makes everything a little bit easier to swallow, even if it’s bitter medicine.

--Jessica

P.S. Plus, at home in Lima, mom and dad got a new puppy! Isn't he cute?

new puppy, Dad and Silver (who is sick and could use your prayers)