It was a Friday afternoon, one week ago. The clinic had closed around noon and we were home getting ready to leave for the prayer service at Frè Dieuna’s house, which was a long walk away. Sure enough, as it usually happens, there was a knock on the gate at about exactly the time we needed to leave. It was a woman in labor. We ushered her onto the porch to do our initial assessment, and she told us she was only 34 weeks along and had been having pain for several hours already. Our assessment confirmed that she was in labor, which made us quite concerned due to her early gestational age. We felt like she should deliver in the clinic where we have better capabilities to take care of an early baby, so we arranged that the other nurses would go to the service and I would take the patient to the clinic and monitor her.

I scanned the mom with our Butterfly IQ+ ultrasound and according to measurements she was around 31 weeks along. We didn’t have much hope that the baby would make it, but there are very few affordable hospitals within driving distance that would be able to care for a baby born that early and besides, it was already too late to transfer her. Fast forward several hours, and she was progressing very slowly. The other nurses came to the clinic when the service was finished and we started swapping out, some staying to monitor the mom while the rest went home for supper.

While we were keeping an eye on the first mom, a second lady came to the clinic in labor. This was a younger girl who was pregnant for the first time, and unfortunately she had drank ginger tea, which is a folk remedy commonly given here to “heat up” labor pains but which usually ends up causing a myriad of problems, including nonstop abdominal pain even between contractions. Thus this girl was in a lot of discomfort even though she was quite early on in her labor. We assessed her and sent her home to continue laboring on her own.

Finally around 9pm we started oxytocin on the first lady to speed things up a bit, and at 10:00 she finally delivered. Her baby was born “en caul”, meaning she was still wrapped entirely in the amniotic sac. In addition, the placenta was delivered at the exact same time as the baby, something I had never seen before. Imagine our surprise when the baby let out a nice loud cry immediately and began breathing on her own with no problems! She weighed only 1.57 kg (3.45 lb.), but was otherwise in good shape. Our biggest concern was her hesitancy to breastfeed and some grunting she was doing while breathing. We did what education we could and gave her an appointment to come back the following Friday. We sent her home not knowing if we would see her again or not.

Friday morning came and we scanned over the patients gathered at the clinic, but there was no baby to be seen. Our hearts sank as the morning went by without them showing up. We assumed the worst, that the baby had obviously not made the week. We were finished with consults around noon, so the nurses and I went home for lunch except for Ang, who stayed to work a bit in the pharmacy. It took her a while to get home, and when she walked in, she announced, “Guess who showed up to the clinic right after you left?” Yep, you guessed it. The baby!

Apparently the little girl is a little fighter and is doing well! She weighed 1.49 kg (3.28 lb) so had lost a few ounces, but that is to be expected for the first week. But she is breastfeeding and developing normally. Praise God for small miracles! Like Ang said, “It was worth staying late over lunch for that!” We will continue to monitor the little girl and hope that she continues to grow and develop.