I praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!

Hard to believe that another month as come and gone already! One more day and we will be into Feb – wow! We have had a good week.

On Monday I went into town to spend the day/night/day at the babies home in Kampala. I was back on as nurse☺ On Monday we went to the hospital to pick up two abandoned babies. One was a little boy, 1.21 kg, who was born at a hospital outside of Kampala and because of his size was transferred to Kampala. He made the transfer and his mom did not. She has not shown up at the hospital and no one can find her. We named the boy Evan, which means warrior. We also picked up a little girl weighing 680 grams (1.5 lbs), the smallest yet to come to the home. She is a miracle. She was born in the community and found on the road by the police. She survived being abandoned and her time at the police station before making it to the special care nursery at the hospital, before coming to us.

I have to share a bit about the special care ward at the hospital with you all. There are about 50 babies in one VERY small unit. The nurses on duty range from 1 or 2 depending on if it is the day or night shift – very bad nurse to patient ratio. The nurses don’t do any of the hands on care like bathing, diaper changes or feeding. All of these things are the mom’s responsibility. So if you have no mom these things don't happen. The moms wait out in a tiny, stinky, hot hallway until ‘feeding’ times when they are allowed in for feeding and care and then when they are done go back to the hallway. As for equipment the hospital has oxygen, an old school version of a CPAP machine, a few small portable monitors, about 20 incubators and a couple bili lights. Syringes are often on short supply and when they run out they just reuse them. The monitors are nice to have, but monitors are only as good as those who can respond to them and with two nurses you can only imagine how much they get responded to. About half of the incubators don’t work and the ones that do work are often missing doors etc. There is a bucket by the door, sometimes it is empty and other times you see many bundles of what look like rolls of blankets. The bucket is where they put dead babies, I assume it gets emptied at night. When we were in the hospital to pick up our two babies on Monday the bucket was full.

The ward was busy on Monday when we went to pick the babies up. It was feeding time and so the moms were in the unit. You have to take your shoes off at the door – everyone does. It grosses me out just thinking about it – hospital and no shoes is not sanitary. Anyway, we walked into the unit, to the back, where the level three babies (the sickest ones) live. Looking for our kids you just have to look at the incubators that have white tap laced across them saying ‘I am abandoned.’ They do this so that moms of other babies may see it and feel pity and take time to feed the baby. Both Ava and Evan where in incubators. Ava’s was even turned on, however the doors where your arms go in were broken off so the heat was not staying in. Evan’s incubator didn’t work, so he was essentially lying in a fancy box. We got everything together and left quickly. The whole time we were there I could hear a baby doing the death moan…I couldn’t see him, but I could hear it. As we were leaving we passed a little baby probably a little less then a kilo lying in one blanket on a metal cart moaning with every breath….heart breaking! I wanted to warm, feed and love him. All he needed was a little attention and maybe CPAP, but the incubators were full and the nurses were busy and I’m sure he didn’t make it much longer. Hard stuff to take process. There is no one to blame for such chaos. It’s not fair for the nurses, a 1 to 25 ratio is not fair. It’s not fair for the mothers, they have no education as to what they should be doing. It’s definitely not fair for the babies, that just because they were born in a third world country as sick or premature that this is what they must face. Heart breaking…and it makes me ask myself what am I to do? I feel blessed with the skills and knowledge I have in working with prems. I have had good schooling and fantastic mentoring as a NICU nurse. I have so much more to learn, but the little I do know I feel can go a long way. On Monday, I had so many different emotions, mostly helplessness. We left the special care ward with our two prems and I thought to myself, little steps. For right now I can provide care to these two little people, to the best of my ability….this is a start!

Another baby died this week at the Bulrushes. He was only at the home for just over a week. He was very badly malnourished. He was about four years old and weighed just over 6 kg. That is bad enough, but on top of that he was badly burnt across his entire trunk of his body. It is incredible that one little body can survive and suffer through so much. He died on Friday. He was loved for the last week of his life and will suffer no more. His name was John, he was the first baby that I have seen at the home that would not smile. He had no joy. He now can experience abundant joy!

This country has so much beauty in it and yet there is brokenness everywhere! I guess this is true with most countries, it’s just the brokenness shows itself in different forms.


I digress; enough about me…Matt had a good week. Working hard at the production unit. He is still pretty consumed with all projects babies home. He has also been starting doing drawings for their new projects. He is very good at this. He did one at home yesterday, he is a perfectionist in many ways and because of this has pretty perfect drawings!

Matt also started with his volleyball on Sat. He had over 20 kids out. We had brought two volleyballs over from Canada and it’s a good thing. He headed out yesterday to practice with his two balls and those were the only two balls they had for the entire practice☺ He said that the kids have never really played volleyball at all so he started with the basics. They didn’t even have a net, next week they will. They practiced for over two hours and Matt said that when he was done a few kids stayed longer to play. I think Matt loved being active – he misses volleyball.


I think that’s it for this week. Tomorrow we are off to Tanzania for the week. It’s VISA renewal time again and we have picked a tropical destination…African style! We will get to swim in the Indian Ocean! We are excited about a little R&R!