1st Tabuk Baby :)

Yesterday a patient came in to the clinic reporting some contractions. She had never been to AGOG (abundant grace of god) clinic, so I went through the whole initial prenatal with her and then did a labor check in. She was in early labor on the brink of entering the active phase.

She went home with her aunt to eat some lunch for a few hours and came back and we hung out for the afternoon, her contractions getting stronger, but still having long periods in between them.

Her baby boy was born at 12:37am, after a difficult pushing stage, but she handled it like a champ.

Tabuk Outreach 1

There haven't been any labors or births yet since I have arrived, but we did an outreach this morning to a village about 30 minutes drive out of Tabuk and had a great time with the people that came out to see us. We did a postpartum health teaching, caring for the mom, the baby etc, and then had merienda (snack) with black very sweet coffee, and sweet bread and then did some checkups. Everyone wanted their blood pressure taken.

This sweet, funny lady (who we guessed through her stories was in her 70's) kept telling us (Lois and I) that we should marry a Filipino man from her area, we laughed and said the problem is that we are both so tall, and so it is hard to find one taller than us! She then agreed that yes, that would be hard :)

The people here speak many different tribal languages depending on where one visits, in this village they mostly spoke a language called Buk-Buk, but most of them could understand and converse well in Illokano (a language I am fluent in from childhood) so that was very fun to sit around and talk with them after the check-ups.

Angus = Ginhawa = Breathe

Just thought I would give you all a few photos of Tabuk where Lois and I are serving for the next 3 weeks. We were given this opportunity to help at this clinic while the director (a girl who interned at MMC for a time) is in Canada. She just gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.

This is the view from my window in the room I am sharing with Lois. We also have the most amazing mosquito net ever over our bed that makes us feel like princesses :)

This is the sign for the clinic with a carabao grazing in front of it. Either he is very friendly and wanted to come and see me or didn't like me and was considering charging at me because he was grazing, paying no one any mind until I got there and took pics. Then he looked up at me and in this next picture started to walk towards me. Needless to say, that was the last picture I took of him before slowly moving back into the clinic gate where his rope wouldn't allow him to go.
This is Zenny (pronounced Senny) the head midwife at the clinic while Georgia is away. She is absolutely wonderful. This is our outdoor shower and bathroom (i.e. CR). The shower is incredible - OC girls - be jealous. :) It may be homemade, but the water pressure is amazing!
This is the pump outside for laundry. Cool looking eh? Sarah de Mello - if you are reading this, I thought of you when I first saw it!
Of course, we do still have time to get online and do computer work as you can see :) We have wireless in the clinic, so keep in touch!

To the wonderful Mothers-Of-Multiples mom:

My mom came to visit a few weeks ago in March and brought with her a whole suitcase full of cloth diapers that snapped shut and had plastic pants to cover them. She said she was given them by a mother from her group of Mothers of Multiples. She had wanted them to be given to moms who really needed them.

I think this was really the right choice - I have given many away already to some of my patients like Jenelyn (who I wrote about in a recent post below) who is the 20 year old beautiful mother of 2 in pink in these pictures.

I was doing a health teaching on breastfeeding, and I always love to bring prizes with me to encourage group participation, and this time I brought 6 of the diapers with the plastic covers. My first question found me a winner of 1 - out of a group of 60 patients, only one had breastfed for 2 years.

I asked other questions - like what is the first milk called that a mother gets while she is still pregnant? I gave a prize to one mother who knew this answer - and continued to explain the importance of colostrum. Many of the mothers here need to be told over and over that yes, they do have milk as soon as their baby is born!

One of the mothers who knew an answer and got a diaper as a prize was actually a continuity of my friend Lois, and Lois later told me she had tried to abort this baby 5 times! None of the times had worked, and now she is actually excited to be pregnant. She is in her 2nd trimester, and said thank you so much for the diaper - it was the first thing she has for her baby, and she is so excited to go home and start packing a bag for delivery!

So again, my deepest thanks to this mom from MVMOM's group who so generously has blessed many lives here in the Philippines. If anyone has any other items they would like to donate, please contact me via the email address on my blog to arrange it. Money could also be designated to buy special things for these moms and their babies. Thank you.

Surprise Twins!

I think the title really says it all... We had a surprise twin delivery at MMC recently! Usually we are very good at finding signs pointing to multiple pregnancies in which case we request ultrasounds and we continue their prenatals, but refer them for delivery at the hospital due to midwife/doctor regulations.

This time, however, the mom went through the whole pregnancy and no one knew - actually no one knew until the first baby came out much smaller than expected (5 pounds something) for the mom's tummy size, so the supervisor (Krys) put a doppler (to hear the baby's hearttones) on the mom's stomach and sure enough another heartbeat was immediately found! The next baby that delivered was much smaller only weighing in at about 3 pounds, but both of them were healthy!





Both parents and midwives at Mercy were shocked and there was alot of to-do around MMC (as this was the first twin delivery in the almost 2 years that I have been here). I wasn't there for the birth, I was upstairs doing prenatals :( but I got to see the babies just after and it was amazing.
These pictures are from a few days after the birth - the mom was anemic during pregnancy and wouldn't stop bleeding after birth, so she was transported to the hospital, but Naomi (the 1st year midwife who delivered the babies) is actually a mom of two and is still breastfeeding so it worked out perfectly for her to take the babies home to continue breastfeeding and make sure that they didn't get sick in the hospital. Glad to report they are still doing so well, but please continue to pray for these little girls and their mom who is in stable condition now, but still in the hospital.

Jenelyn Navarro

I was in the prenatal room getting a grocery check one monday a long time ago - last November actually - and saw Jenelyn getting her initial prenatal done. I knew I would very much enjoy being her midwife and so asked if she would be ok with that, so I picked her up as a continuity even though I wasn't even on shift! (Got teased for that one to be sure!)

We have had a great run of it - she is 20 and this was her second baby. She got to meet my mom when she was here this last March, and I knew I was cutting it close when i agreed to go to this clinic in Tabuk to help out for the next 3 weeks, but I just asked her to have her baby a week early :)

She said she would try, and I prayed with her that God would bring this little one out in His good timing, and continued to pray on my own because I really wanted to deliver her baby, and God answers prayers better than we can pray for them! I asked on Wednesday night - April 16 - that she be in labor the next day because I knew I wasn't busy that day and I knew it would give us enough time to do the birth well and then even get a baby check in before I left. And wouldn't you know it, I got a great sleep, had a shower and even had coffee made when I got the text saying she was in labor! I 1/2 expected her to be in early labor, but also was hoping she was active. The second was true - I checked her in at 9:30am and she had her baby boy, Bernardo, named after the dad's grandpa who raised him at 11:08am!

Mom - The last pictures are for you - thanks so much for the beautiful girls' clothes and diapers and stuff. I hardly have any left! I gave Jenely diapers for her baby boy that I delivered, and some of the dresses and God's 1,2,3's and colors for their older daughter, Lovely Jane.

We had a hard time getting Lovely to look at the camera! And yes - this amazing Filipina just had a baby 4 days ago!

Last Assignment!

After almost 2 years of working hard and expanding our brains, we have finally reached the end!

For me, for now, I don't plan on going back to school, so this could very well be the very last assignment I ever turn in! Of course this doesn't mean that we are completely done, now we enter into the preparation phase for taking our board exam from NARM this August. We will be taking tests every week on different subjects from prenatals to delivery to postpartum and everything in between.

So here goes nothing!

Pictures of the Freeman Girls in Cauayan

Just a few more pictures from the rest of our trip. Enjoy :)

Pictures of my Mom and Sister in Davao

There has been a severe lack of pictures on my blog as of late, so to make up for that, here are some pictures from the time my mom, sister and Ate Mae (a Filipina from Luzon who is like a sister to me) were in Davao.

We did lots of fun tourist type things, and they got to watch me deliver one baby - which ended up being a very difficult birth, so the day we left for Manila we went in to watch my teammate, Jenna deliver a baby (her 75th!) which was uncomplicated and a good one to leave them with.

So enjoy :)

More pictures to come from the Cauayan portion of our trip at a later date since I am struggling to keep my eyes open at this point.