I have created this blog for anyone that wants regular updates about my time here in Malawi. I am currently volunteering my time to the Ministry of Hope Crisis Nursery and Orphan Feeding Centers.  I am a Neonatal Intensive Care nurse helping to care for the orphaned, abandoned and ill babies of Malawi.  I will try to post updates as often as I can. I thank you all for your support and prayers. Please send them to the babies, children, and people of Africa too. I hope in the pictures you are able to get a small idea of what life is like here for me, but mainly the people of Malawi.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Today we are 1!!!

 
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All of the babies at the nursery are sweet, but Julius and Juliet (twins) are about as sweet as they come. I was reviewing each babies health passports and when I came across theirs, I noticed that they were 1 today!!! I told the nannies and we all sang Happy Birthday to them. Thank goodness for Aunt Becky, she bought a lot of clothes for the babies and today they were decked out in their finest!!! Thanks Aunt Becky!!! It is so cute to see Julius and Juliet interact with each other too. They know they are brother and sister, something surprising when it isn't just the two of them. Of all the babies around them, they play with each other, it is so cute. Today they were playing with a rubber ball and just giggling. They are sitting up but not yet standing, which isn't too alarming; most children are developmentally delayed but eventually do catch up.




This is little Tanache. She is so sweet too. She is going to be 1 soon, but still can not sit up without support. She has really poor tone and is very weak. I have been trying to get her to bear weight on her arms (as you see here) and her legs but she needs leg braces for the exercises. She was really sick the first several months of her life and now she is well and trying to catch up. A few weeks ago she started taking milk, apparently she would only take yogurt before that. I don't know what they had been giving her in the village.

As far as the rest of the babies, they all seem to be doing okay. The three babies with impetigo are healing and I am working with a few others that are small to get added calories in their diet. Some positive things I have noticed at the nursery are the things that I instituted last year are still in place and functioning for the most part which makes me feel really good. To get things the way they need to be however would take a much longer stay than 1 month. There are so many things to improve on it is hard to know what to tackle first. I am doing what I can in this short amount of time. It helps that I already have a foundation and relationships at the nursery, so I don't have to start from scratch.

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