Wednesday, June 2, 2010

First Day at Clinic

Today, Molly and I got to go down to the clinic for the morning. They had worship for the moms, and we were able to follow along since they were familiar songs in English. Then Molly and I partnered up with a nurse/midwife and followed them during the prenatal check ups. We got to do all the assessment things like listening to the baby's heart beat, feeling the baby's position, measure the fundal height, checking for edema, and we even got to do an IE (if you don't know what that is, you probably don't want to! haha). I got to practice a little of the Cebuano I've been learning, that's the native language here. Most of them know English, but they are more comfortable speaking Cebuano. So far I've mastered "I am Melissa," "Thank you," "Can I listen to your baby's heartbeat?" and a couple others. Some of the words are the same in Spanish but some are very different... also "puerta" does not mean door. One of the ladies that came in was 39 weeks so I got to see how dilated she was and I could feel the baby's head! What a great experience :) We also hooked her up to the CTG machine, which measures the baby's heartbeat, movement and contraction strength. It's used to determine whether the mom is in active labor or not. She wasn't quite there, but I got to learn how the machine worked. At the end of her check-up, the nurse I was following asked her a few questions and it turned out that she was going through a lot so we had the opportunity to pray with her and tell her more about God's love for her. It was really great and you could just see the big smile on her face at the end.

After the morning at the clinic, we went to lunch with David and Hilary at a huge mall. I finally was able to get some Filipino money. And boy does my bank account look better in pesos! At first I was trying to withdraw money in dollars, and when it wouldn't let me Hilary explained that it had to be in pesos, my bad :) We've been having such a great time so far. I even got myself some yummy, sugary cereal at the store. Although the food has been delicious so far! Well that's it for today. We're having company over for dinner tonight so that should be fun, bye! :)

Love,
Melissa

1 comment:

  1. Hey Melis- I am so glad you are writing about your experiences so far! Sounds like SO much fun!! YAY for preggo ladies=0) I LOVE you tons and tons and I am praying for your time over there! Take lots of photos and videos!

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