Shiphrah Birthing Home

Here are some pictures I've taken recently of prenatals and babies. Enjoy! :-D

it was so sweet - this daddy was quietly crooning to his newborn daughter

chop suey for lunch - liver (yum!), carrots, cabbage, and cyote

this little girl was adorable during prenatals - she systematically emptied her mom's purse until she found what she was looking for - crackers

nursing students - the three on the left were the ones illegally copying my client's chart while the one on the far right staring at the camera is the one who wanted to marry my brother

Abby does a prenatal

this little girl was serious trouble - she was just wandering around unsupervised, picking things up and moving them, poking other kids, stealing hats, and climbing on the coffee table

Divisoria

Divisoria is a huge market in Manila about an hour and a half's travel from where we are. Because it's notorious for pick-pockets and other bad characters, we asked Ate Helen to join us. First, we took a long jeepney ride to Santolan where we switched to a train. From there, we took another jeepney to get us to the market.

It was a lot of fun, getting to see things and walk around and explore. 

The pictures were taken with Karissa's camera because she had the cheapest camera (if you have an expensive camera, you are advised to not bring it).

jeepney line up

train station

riding the train - and yes, in this pic I look pregnant because I wore my fanny pack under my shirt...

market goods

Divisoria

puppies for sale!

inside a mall where we ate dinner - those bracelets on the rack were 10 pesos each, about 25 cents

this picture isn't as descriptive, but here's a quick intro to Filipino driving

from left: Ate Helen, Abigail, me at the end of a long day

Dishonesty does not fly with me...

Today, I got really mad. 

During prenatals, Ate Grace came up to me and said, "Um, Danielle. You might want to go see what the nursing students are doing - they're copying down the chart information from one of your COCs." Translation: they're doing something bad and you're the only one that we think will be able to get the chart away from them. In other words, they hate conflict so much they'll have me do the dirty work because they know I'll do it if I think it needs to be done.

So I walked up to the table, and saw them copying a chart from my lady who delivered four days ago. "EXCUSE ME! You were not at that birth so you should NOT be copying all that information down! Stop now. Give me the chart now please." Then I picked up my pen and scribbled across their pages where they were still completely copying all the information, to claim that they had been at the birth. That wasn't enough. You could still see what they had written. Something told me they would still have used the information if they could read it. So, I ripped the pages out of their notebooks, folded them up, and dumped them into a trashcan. 

In order to graduate from nursing school, nursing students have to "attend" twenty births. Except they don't always exactly attend the births. If they can copy down the information from someone's chart, they can claim that as a birth they attended. So that's what they were doing. 

Argh! Dishonesty does not fly with me.

Love in Any Language

Here's a video I created with clips from the past two months.

Enjoy!

(Note: to see it larger, the youtube link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teRk7Jc089w&feature=youtu.be)

Pictures!

I couldn't really think of anything to update, but I had a bunch of pictures I wanted to share with y'all...So I'll just put the pictures up and explain what happens in each of them.

Enjoy!

Lampons hung out to dry. Lampons are actually flour sacs that are used as rags and towels out here.

wild orchids blooming at the baby home

shoes at the baby home

just hangin' out, you know

isn't this family so cute? The mom is the one in the middle.

And The Baby Smiled

Ok, this kid is only about 12 hours old. But it totally looks like she's smiling of her own accord! :-D

For those who were Worried, I'm Ok!

As some of you might know, there was a huge (7.6 magnitude) earthquake off of the island of Samar in the Philippines last night, around 8:45pm.

I was watching a movie (The Avengers, to be exact) when I thought the ground started vibrating slightly, but I had the laptop on the floor with me and the movie was at an intense part, so I thought it was just the laptop causing the vibrations. It could have just been the laptop, but then again, it could have been the earthquake.

Other than that, I have been totally unaffected by the quake.

The funny thing was I woke up and came over to the birthcenter this morning, not knowing what had happened. Then I checked e-mail first thing and saw fifteen e-mails, all with the subject lines "Are you ok?!" and "praying for you."

I was thinking, "WHAT?!"

So I read them, and was still confused because NO ONE mentioned the earthquake. Finally, I just googled "Philippines disaster," and up popped an article from BBC News about the earthquake which informed me about why everyone was worried.

So if you saw the information about the earthquake and prayed for me or were worried about me, thank you so much! I greatly appreciate your prayers! :-D