A day of discovery

Today was a day full of discoveries. We learned this morning when we arrived at the Barlad hospital that we would be able to work with the children that were in isolation. Robin and Luisa volunteered to attend to this room. They discovered three babies under 12 months old and probably under 5 lbs each. Except for little Maruna, who is a healthy, chubby cheeked little girl with down syndrome. I diagnosed her; yep, call me Dr. Hanley (just kidding). Maruna loved being held by Robin, and when she laid her down Maruna cried, so of course she had to be picked back up!!! We also discovered that Cleo looks adorable in a tutu!! When we arrived Coca, the nurse aide the babies, who is paid by Global Volunteers, had her dressed in one of the tutu's that Evan had delivered the day before. I discovered that little Allena has more "language" than she lets on, and this was demonstrated when she was interacting with Mihalia, our team leader. We discovered that our progression with Chistian was slowed today, because he was a little fussy but Kristin worked her magic with him. She had him laughing and smiling, as long as his belly was full and diaper was clean. Little Delia is still running a temperature but in spite of that she still manages to look oh so adorable and make the funniest faces. I can't imagine what she is going to be like when she is feeling better. We discovered that our "plan" for Eanoots was just that, our plan, that little guy is a puzzle that I'm sure our team will help in some way. I discovered that Gabi is a fun feeding challenge, and hope to get her taking a few bites with her teeth before we leave. She loved to eat but doesn't really like her face touched, so that creates some opportunity for me to discover other ways to met the same goals. On our break we walked to the cafe, because we discovered it had the best bathrooms and pastries (priorities). Unfortunately, we were only able to partake of the pastries because the water was not working at the cafe. Wow, all this in one day! I was thinking the third day might be less interesting....... We ended the day having wine, and sharing stories in Evan's single room!

***This was my journal entry for our team. Each day someone writes in the journal and another person shares a message of the day. Today was my message and tomorrow, I will share this journal entry for our team.

I want to all direct you to a fellow volunteer's blog. Robin is an artist, and her blog is littlewhisperers.blogspot.com. Her pictures are excellent.