Happy New Year

This past week was a little more restful than the rest of December. After I got home from Puerto Cabezas Friday night (actually 12:30 Saturday morning), I got to crash for a few days. Finished an excellent book (Three Cups of Tea) on Saturday afternoon. Had a headache most of Sunday. I dragged myself out to visit a few patients, but spent most of my time trying to sleep in the hammock. Then Monday I was still dead tired, so I took a nap all morning.

Boring, right? Don´t worry, it gets better.

Wednesday, New Year´s Eve, Janet came to the mission hill and handed us a letter from Esperanza. It was a request for transportation for a pregnant woman there. She had gotten into a fight a few days before and the other party had battered her pretty well. Whoever it was hit her hard in the stomach. Not a good thing to have happen to a 32 weeks and 5 days pregnant mother. She had started hemorrahging and having labor pains.

Jeremy went with Janet to Esperanza to pick the woman up on the four-wheeler (which was still running at that point). Then we took the truck into Waspam. The woman was in quite a bit of pain, probably both labor pains and pain from being beat up.

Outside Waspam, we got stopped by a roadblock - the Yatama, one of Nicaragua´s political parties. No idea why they were blocking the road - that´s just something people do around here. Janet told them to get out of the way, so they did. :)

We got the pregnant lady to the hospital. I went in with her, but Jeremy went to go get gas. The doctor examined her in the labor and delivery room and said she was 7 centimeters dilated already. The doctor said the baby was still alive, but she wasn´t sure it would survive because it was so premature. They gave the mother a bed and wanted her to lie down and wait. But when she was about to get into bed, she decided it would be a better idea to go back to the labor and delivery room. :) She laid down and five minutes later the baby popped out.

It was my third time helping with a birth, and as usual I felt like I got in the way more than anything. Every birth is amazing to watch, and in this one I felt especially worried about the baby because it was so premature and so small - 3.25 pounds! He was a fighter, tho - started screaming right away, and pretty loud.

About two minutes after the birth, Jeremy walked in. He looked at the baby and said, ¨Well, that was fast.¨ :) The baby had been born about 10 minutes after we reached the hospital. If that roadblock hadn´t been cleared for us, we could have been delivering the baby in the back of the truck! Thank God we got to the hospital in time....

So that was my amazing New Year´s Eve. That night I stayed up till midnight listening to music and playing games, and the next day we took a day trip to Esperanza to swim in the beautiful Wawa River. We also took a dugout canoe up the river a little way - we put 6 people in it and then tried to paddle it up stream in a spot where the current was just a little too strong - and we shipped a bunch of water all at once and the boat sunk out from under us. It was hilarious.

Probably not the way you spent the New Year´s holiday. Nicaragua is always different. :)