At the Clinic

Today was a very busy day at the clinic. There was a maternity clinic today for all the babies to come in and get vaccinations. Also pregnant mothers came in to have checkups. The babies are all very cute, before they got their shots we had to weigh them and measure their height. After doing that we had to plot their height on growth charts. Almost all of them were under weight or quite low, except for one or two that were average. After being weighed they went on to get their shots. Ange got to give all the babies their shots, which was a really good experience as she has never given needles to a baby before. James the nurse showed her how first and she did all the rest. The babies got shots for pneumonia, TB, hepatitis and polio. All the babies cried so much when they got their needle one of them sounded like it was laughing hysterically it was very cute! The pregnant mothers that came in got checked to make sure the babies were in the right place and that they had a strong heart beat. Of course this is all done by palpating since their is no ultrasound in the clinic. The nurse showed us how to tell how far along the pregnancy is by counting the number of finger widths the baby could be felt above the belly button. Two of the mothers were expected to give birth any time! Then we checked the iron levels of the pregnant moms and not surprisingly all of them are very low, in fact if they were in Canada they would be classified as anemic however in Kenya the value to be considered anemic is much lower so many of them were just considered low. It is interesting to see the difference in health standards here for example in Canada you are not even allowed to donate blood if your iron level is below 25, and the highest measured level we saw today was 12! We gave them some counselling on good foods to eat to help increase their iron however it is quite expensive to buy meat here which is probably why they have such low levels. We also gave them iron supplements but this is of course only a temporary fix. It was a very busy and interesting day we are looking forward to Monday as there is a food distribution center at the clinic that day!