We had multiple packing days to get ready for the trips to Nepal and Uganda. But in the last week of January we all got together with Grace, one of the midwives going to Uganda, to pack as many bags as possible. The students going to Nepal were taking two extra bags of donated supplies, mostly knit baby hats, booties, blankets and sweaters, and the students going to Uganda were packing one extra bag each. The bags could be up to 50 lbs each.
As we are going to sites where they have very limited resources in addition to the blankets and hats, we also take blood pressure cuffs, fetoscopes for listening to the fetal heart, stethoscopes, various other supplies, equipment to teach helping babies breathe, and plastic model pelvises and babies to teach emergency skills like breech and shoulder dystocia. We will use them while we are at our various sites and then leave them behind.
Some students made birthing pants for us to use when demonstrating slow delivery of the head to reduce vaginal and perineal tears, others made cloth doll and placenta pairs, and others prepared handouts for the workshops we will be facilitating.
We are so grateful to all of the people who worked so hard to knit donations for us. In Nepal and Uganda it is considered bad luck to buy any baby items before the baby is born so many families do not have any blankets to wrap their newborns in. This is particularity a problem in rural and remote Nepal where it is very cold in the winter.
At the end of a very busy day we had most of the bags packed and ready to go with us on our placements.
No comments:
Post a Comment