Today was a whole lot of new and a whole lot of awesome!

 So this morning started out a little bit confusing. I woke up at 4:50am because I really wanted to run before going to the hospital. Priscilla was going to come with and bike next to me so I could the main road (which I haven’t done yet because it wouldn’t be the smartest thing for a blonde American to do at 5am, but would be SO much nicer than running in small circles on the Harvey’s property), but she wasn’t feeling very well and hadn’t slept much the night before so I just went outside and started my laps around their property. However it was pitch black and the ground wasn’t very even so I stopped after a short time because it was inevitable that I’d twist my ankle. So I headed inside, showered, made breakfast, and spent some time with God. It was super relaxing and nice to just take things slow. Around 6:30am we were informed that Dr. Harvey would not be going into the hospital until 11 and we didn’t have any other way to the hospital, so we ended up just going to one of the young missionary couple’s house (the Lunsfords) and playing card games all morning.

When 11am rolled around Dr. Harvey took Priscilla and I on a house call where we practiced taking vital signs; temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and respirations. After finding that I once-quite-sick patient was doing better, we headed to the hospital!

This week Priscilla and I are working in maternity. Today there were lots of moms that came in for checkups, medicine, and even to deliver! The head nurse showed us how to check how many centimeters dilated a woman is. Once you stick your hand inside the women if you can fit two fingers horizontally in their cervix it means the lady is 2 centimeters dilated! You slowly open your fingers until you can’t open them anymore and that is around 5 or more centimeters depending on the hand that is measuring. (Sorry if this makes anyone uncomfortable to read, I love the human body and you should too!) We practiced this measuring method on many women, even on one that was about to give birth! Pricilla and I got to actually reach our hand up to feel the baby’s head breaking out of the placenta (i.e. the woman’s water had already broke), it was incredible! Neither Priscilla nor I had seen a delivery, and here in Africa, if you leave for 10 minutes the baby will probably already have been born and dressed by the time you get back. These African ladies are warriors. I watched two girls deliver their third baby (neither of them was older than 20) without yelling or medicine. They would simple snap their fingers or clap their hands when they were feeling pain and then WAH-LAH the baby was push and out! The first delivery I watched was the longest, it lasted a total of 2 hours from the beginning of contractions to the baby coming out! It was so beautiful and Priscilla and I both really struggled not to cry during the whole thing. Our God is so magnificent! We clapped and congratulated the mother (which apparently is really unusual because all the other mothers laughed at us and then joined and clapped too)! The second delivery took less than 30 minutes and the girl didn’t make a peep! The whole pushing process was so simple and the nurses were pros at tugging those suckers out. Yes, it still looked painful and makes me feel like a wimp when it comes to actually having my own kids in the future, but oh well, I’ll worry about that later.

After the deliveries it was pretty much time to head back to our house. We packed our stuff up, and once back at our little house we made delicious homemade pancakes and syrup, topped with bananas for dinner…. and then we passed out.

It was a long and exciting day that I’m sure I will never forget.