TIny baby stories

I really have to write a better description of this story, but for now here is the free-write version...

I had another one of those totally surreal days while I was working at the clinic yesterday. The bell rang loud and long at about 11am, we could the low drone of a tricycle (the motorcycle with the sidecar). One of the midwives ran out to the gate, a woman was crying, and she wouldn't move. Her kasama (friend) said "the baby's coming.

The midwife picked her up, walked into the clinic and laid her on the bed, looked down, yes the baby was coming. "Breath when it hurts, the baby is coming" the midwife said. The woman was suddenly astonished. "what? I'm only five months." A few minutes later, a tiny little baby was born, less than 3 pounds. He was breathing and after a few minutes of oxygen, we got into a taxi to take him to the hospital, he shouldn't have been born out of hospital in the first place. The kasama was only a land lady and had to get home, the woman was alone, but not ready to come with us.

The taxi didn't start. The neighbours pushed it down the street to get it going. We went to our nearest hospital.

When we called ahead, they said we can't help you, no working incubators. I thought maybe they could at least call around to different public hospitals to see where we should go, but they didn't have a phone list that we could use. The doctor looked at the baby, and said "it's too small anyway". We had a midwife at the clinic try to call around for us and in the meantime we got a new taxi and off to another place.

Imagine, 2 white girls, a filipina, all of us in scrubs, standing in the middle of the road, jeepneys flying past us, a three pound baby in arms, an oxygen tank in another set of arms (these aren't the nice little tanks we use at home that are compact and light, no this is a green heavy rusted metal O2 tank that weighs over thirty pounds) and another arm hailing a cab?

We had the taxi driver turn off the air con, and keep the windows up, it must of have been 40 degrees in the car. We went to one of our faithful hospitals, they too had no incubators, so went to the third hospital and an hour later, in the emergency room with a lamp over a bed, a little 2 and a half pound miracle lay, with a normal temperature and normal breathing. This was the National Children's hospital, where there too were no incubators available. Here there was a phone list, we called the remaining 5 options for public hospitals and NO WHERE is there an incubator available for the poor in this city of over 16 million people.

The doctors continued to say they could not admit the baby without written consent of the mother acknowledging that they were not responsible for their lack of available appropriate equipment.

I feel ripped up for these physicians. They are skilled, caring, pursuing excellence, yet they are placed in these situations where they know the baby will not be well off, that the baby should have something else that is not available. They don't want to be responsible for the tragedy of poverty and yet so often it lays on them.

I wish this woman would have come earlier, that we may have had the possibility of catching on that something wasn't right sooner in her pregnancy. But we hold onto the truth of life for this little one. I taught the mom kangaroo care and tomorrow, I'll go see how they're doing.

Kangaroo care is where the baby is skin to skin with the mom with a sheet wrapped around them both, to keep the baby's temperature steady and warm.

On the same note, another woman came in later that evening, in premature labour, we transported and 4 hospitals later, no one admitting her because she is preterm and there are no available incubators, the woman was so finished, she decided to go home and if her baby came, it came. She had an ultrasound at one of those hospitals, they estimated the baby to be 1700grams, less than four pounds and 31 weeks. Too small to be born at home. We haven't heard from her yet. I can imagine how she must have felt. I would hate driving around the city having contractions, in a taxi going from hospital to hospital. The thought of being in her place makes me feel clammy, full of infection, cold, hopeless, uncared for. Even before arriving at hospital number one, I would have felt like going home to my house, eat some rice, curl up with my 5 other kids and husband on our cement floor (or linoleum on dirt) and pray for health.

It is outside the responsibility of the doctors, or even the hospitals, poverty and undervaluing the poor is one place to start. But not that we should be looking to lay blame. Life is unfair. We left them blankets to keep the baby warm, I don't think they'll call us. Intercession is everything that we can do. ( I was going to write "all that we can do" but no, it has to be the beginning the middle and the end!!! it has to be everything)