Jambo!!!

Today I ventured into the previous home of team canada, labour ward!!! What an experience. I have to begin by saying that I am not a qweezy person, blood and guts I love, even watching a birth at home didn't affect me. However at Mt Meru I nearly ended up on the floor!! Let me tell you this.... That floor is somewhere I would not like to wake up on, especially as the legendary cleaner had not got round to cleaning it yet. It would have been hard work trying to dodge the blood and wee on the way down!!

Anyways back to my day, the labour ward is made up of 8 beds, it's also the only place where there is only one mama to a bed!! It looked like luxury compared to some of the other wards. Each mama is only allowed onto the ward when they are a minimum of 4cm dilated. Then it's just a waiting game until the babe is ready to enter the world. It was quite a shock at first as all the mamas are naked (I didn't quite know where to look!!) There really was no urgency at all even when the mamas were crowning, the nurses still took their time to get everything ready, again cross infection and minimising infection is there but on a much smaller scale than in the UK. There is no pain relief for the mamas, and let me tell you they are strong women, not like us from the UK!!! They literally just grin and bare the pain!! Straight after the baby is born the mama is given 10units of oxytocin to contract the uterus. Once the placenta (which I found resembled some kind of out of space creature) has been delivered, they do the most strangest thing. They massage and push against the uterus so all the afterbirth and fluid flushes out of the body!!! YUK!!!

Meanwhile while this is going on the placenta is left on the bed and the flies are having a field day!! It's like christmas has come early!!

Once the babies have been delivered the are wrapped in the same patterened conga as their mama, which is how you can identify which babe belongs to which mama. Literall after maybe 10 mins the mamas make a 5 min walk to the post natal ward, which is so surreal as the nurse carries the baby and everyone says hongera (congratulations) to the nurse not the mama!!

Anyways I think it's safe to say that adoption is certainly the path that I'm going to take!! Either that or I'm asking for a general anaesthetic!!! But one thing is for sure the African women are made of steel!!!