boona boona!!!

Hi everyone, hope everyone is doing well.  We are having a great time here in our little town of Tutova.  The health minister is supposed to come visit us today so everyone on staff has been working extra hard to keep the clinic squeaky clean.  Speaking of staff, I don't think I mentioned that there is 1 charge nurse and 3 nursing attendants for the 20 kids.  They are so hard working!  By the time we get there at 9 am, they have bathed all the babies and have already completed one feeding. 

We now have formed somewhat of a routine, I continue to hang out with the little ones and am slowly accepting that habits are hard to break.  It breaks my little OT heart to feed the babies in supine but they seem to be so accustomed to eating that way that they won't eat in my arms, just like they don't fall asleep in my arms and prefer to rock themselves to sleep, sucking on their thumbs.  It also hit me really hard today while I was alone in the baby room and watching over them while they slept, that it is so sad that there are kids all over the world who are better off in places such as these or foster homes than with their mommies and daddies.  And, I was so grateful for places like this Tutova clinic who provide such a loving and clean home where the kids have many brothers and sisters to play with. 

The MD who is the director of the hospital was kind enough to request that I come up with some kind of a plan for an area to provide occupational therapy in the clinic and our country manager was very open to having home programs set up for these kids for continuity of care, so I'm also really excited!   The ideas for these projects keeps me up at night, in addition to trying to think of how we could somehow save these cute little dogs who are so affectionate and loving.   We will see how it goes...in the meantime, enjoy some cute pics of the little ones!!!