moms, $1 meals & market

This week I am assigned to work at the general hospital, Luis Vernaza, but because we have so many other things going on, and now only 2 instructors, they are kind of letting us choose our own clinical sites. So today, I chose to go back to good old Soto Mayor, the baby factory. I love that place. I didn’t do any labor support today though. Before we came, I was asked by one of my professors to be one of four students to help them conduct interviews here in Guayaquil of women who recently gave birth. We just ask them a bunch of questions about their whole pregnancy, the actual labor and birthing process and then the post-partum period. I did a few interviews my first week here, but in order to get the minimum 20 interviews that the head professor, Lynn Callister, wanted, I needed to do at least six, and I had only done 2. Today I did 3 more. They are really a lot of fun, especially with the first-time moms. They are just so excited and emotional about the whole thing. It has been very a neat experience talking to them.
One thing that I love is that these women who I have talked to are all extremely spiritual. Almost every single person I have talked to, when I asked them about what helped them the most during the laboring process mentioned Heavenly Father as their biggest source of strength. It’s also been fun just to hear about the different customs and ideas they have. One big thing here is that the moms put little red bracelets on the babies to protect them from being “ojeado” (the evil eye). From what I gather, it protects them from when they meet people that want to do them harm, it protects the baby from getting sick. It is also connected in some way to the custom that if you are admiring a baby, you need to touch it, because if not, maybe you are giving it the “evil eye” or something. I’m still not completely sure on that whole thing but, yeah.
By the time I had finished three interviews, it was time for the women to have their allowed one-hour visit with their family and so I definitely did not want to encroach on that time, so I left post-partum. I was going to try to get back into the labor and delivery unit, but they wouldn’t let me in because we already had 5 students in there or whatever, so instead I went and found one of the nurseries. The nurse I worked with was super cool. It felt just like a clinical in the States, she taught me stuff, like how to give a baby its first bath (I never had actually done that before) and then expected me to do it. It was super fun. But remember how I mentioned a while ago how the babies don’t get to be with their moms for four hours if it is a normal delivery or for six hours if it was a C-section, and we always worried about the babies getting really hungry? Well, I found out how they solve that problem! If a baby was crying because it was hungry the nurse would pull out a bottle from who knows where, wrap it up in a blanket and come and hand it to me and have me hold the baby at the back of the room with my back to the window so the parents couldn’t see that we were bottle-feeding their children! I seriously felt so sneaky! I especially laughed when I was back there feeding a baby and I looked up at the wall in front of me and found a huge poster about how giving only mother’s milk for at least the first six months is the best thing for the baby! Oh Soto Mayor!
We found this amazing place for dinner tonight. $1 meals! Yep, I paid $1 for carne asada (thin steak), rice and beans! I will let you know if I am sick tomorrow, but for today it tasted really good and with a price you can’t beat, the cons seemed minimal.

All of this for $1!

After dinner, we went out to an artisan market here in Guayaquil. It was fun but pretty crazy. Most of you know how much I just LOVE shopping, especially in places that have a ton of things just all stacked and shoved together. I am pretty sure that entering the store Ross Dress for Less is like my worst nightmare. (Maybe that is one of those things I could work on changing as well.) Anyway, this place was packed and there were rows and rows of all of these different little booths. It was inside a building too so it was also super hot and sweaty, yeah, I think you get the picture. Amazingly enough though, it was pretty fun. We were only there for an hour, so it wasn’t that terrible, and I found a really cute necklace and earrings set for $2, so I shouldn’t complain too much. I would have died had I gone there with my friend, Eleanor Kramer, though because I think we could have been there for more like 10 hours. (I am just remembering a brief shopping trip we had going through Vegas once.)
FHE and then nighty night for this little nurse.

Okay so I realized today that I am not so good at remembering to take pictures. Allie, my roommate is usually the one to help me out in that area, and we weren't together today. So sorry about the only picture being of the $1 meal.