Project Report
| Feb 14, 2022
Lorna's Story
By Adam Hewitt Smith | Trustee, Born on the Edge
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For this months project report we would like to tell you Lorna’s story. It's the story of just one mama and her baby, but she’s not so unlike many other mamas that we care for everyday.
Join us on a journey to read Lorna’s story, and open your heart to the possibility of giving a gift that will provide LIFE and HOPE to babies and mamas like Lorna. That’s what we’re asking for — for you to support our neonatal trainers so that together we can give the gift of LIFE and HOPE.
“I was just 15 years old when I gave birth to my first baby. It has changed my life. I conceived during the lock down as my school was closed. I had dreams of becoming a nurse, but now I am not sure if I will go back. I live with my mother who is a peasant farmer and has no source of income for my school fees. When I realised I was pregnant, at about 6months, I went to a clinic for antenatal services with a midwife. Shortly after that, I got malaria and that led to me delivering my baby boy at 6 months. He weighed just 960g and was so tiny. I gave birth in a small clinic, and they immediately referred me to the Neonatal Unit.
Here, he was put in the high-dependency area on a breathing machine called CPAP and I learnt to tie him in Kangaroo. The team showed me how to express my milk to give to him with a feeding tube, but right from the start, I struggled to express my breast milk. I tried everything they recommended, and ate daily from the Nourish-to-Nurture programme, but I couldn’t express enough milk to meet the demands of my baby boy. This made me really stressed. I truly thank God for the Donor Human Milk that came to my rescue. This helped me so much and my baby was able to gain weight, he stopped crying so much and I felt better. It brought a feeling of great relief and joy to me. Without the donor human milk my baby might not be here today.
My baby is due for discharge today!
I am so happy that the Donor Milk has given my child a chance to live and I am very grateful to
ATTA Breastmilk and the Donor Mothers. I encourage all mothers in a similar situation to embrace Human Donor Milk and those that are able to donate please go ahead as this is indeed lifesaving and could help so many babies.
I am so very grateful to God, the Neonatal team, and the Donor mothers for giving my child a chance to live. I look forward to an opportunity of getting back to school when I can find my school fees so that I can pursue my dream of becoming a nurse and help others.”
The more you give in support of our neonatal training team, the more mothers and their babies that we can support. Please don't hesitate, donate today.
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Gaining weight
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Lorna's story
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Oct 15, 2021
A single act of kindness
By Adam Hewitt Smith | Trustee, Born on the Edge
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A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees’. - Amelia Earhart.
What will be your act if kindness today? Please consider supporting our neonatal trainers and clinicians, who lead the staff training, neonatal education and clinical care of our babies. Here we share one of our patient's stories:
“We came here when our baby was very sick, we almost lost him. He was only a few days old, but he was convulsing, passing blood and in septic shock. The team admitted us and started him on oxygen and treatment immediately, they were so good watching after our baby all the time. The convulsions stopped, but after 2 days he wasn’t improving and he started vomiting a green colour. The doctor sent us for x-ray and I was so worried as I had not seen any other patients being sent for X-ray. My hope begun to leave me, I thought we were going to loose him. Thankfully the x-ray wasn’t too bad, but the doctor explained that our baby’s infection wasn’t responding to any of the medications that were available in the hospital and that they wanted to change him onto another medication, but that it was quite expensive.
We wanted to try, so we found the money and we started that morning. He started to improve a little by that evening and finally his temperature and heart rate started to normalise. Day by day our baby improved. He is now perfect, doing well, his brain scan is normal and he is breastfeeding well. We have spent 17 days in the neonatal unit, but we don’t regret a single moment.
The team has done us so well and we pray they may live long to treat many more children. We thank God for the doctors and nurses, because today we have been sent home with our beautiful baby.”
We can only continue this amazing work in eastern Uganda with the support of people like you. If you would like to set up a fundraiser to raise money for much needed additional monitoring and breathing equipment, support a neonatal care training course or support our neonatal trainers, we would be so grateful for any donation you can give
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Jun 16, 2021
Going home weighing 1.35kg
By Adam Hewitt Smith | Trustee, Born on the Edge
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“I am Zabaali and I am 32 years old. After a long period of 15 years since my first born, I am now a mother of two children.
I had my first born at 18 years old and carried my first pregnancy up to term. However since my first pregnancy, all the rest of my pregnancies have all ended early. Several investigations were done and nothing was found to be the definitive cause. Me and my husband we have been worried for all that time. However for this 8th pregnancy the story has been little different, I started falling sick at 5 months of pregnancy. I went to hospital for treatment and kept going back for review. The doctors told me I had urine infection which kept returning. When I made 6months, the infection recurred and I got malaria at the same time. I felt so bad and very weak during that time. Suddenly, one morning I realised water was flowing down my legs, though there was no blood and I felt no pain. I was quickly rushed to the main hospital and put on bed rest. I was already so worried of losing my baby again. On the second day of admission the labour pains started and worsened within hours. At around midday my baby came out and she didn't cry immediately however she was rushed to neonatal unit.
The day my baby girl was admitted, she was unstable with difficult breathing and kept stopping to breath. She only weighed 850g. The doctors told me my baby required a breathing machine (CPAP) to help her breath since she was so very tiny, but no machine was available. They were all occupied by other sick babies. The doctors and nurses encouraged me to keep the baby warm by kangaroo mother care and she was kept on oxygen.
The following day a CPAP machine was given to my little angel and the doctor encouraged me and promised me that she would do whatever she could to see my small baby survive. The team of doctors and nurses worked and encouraged me as I also followed the instructions they gave me. I practiced continuous kangaroo care, expressed milk to feed her ever 2 hours and kept everything as clean as I could. I did that all routinely for the whole three months we were admitted in the unit.
Am very happy that my baby managed to pull through from the time of birth, when she was only 850g, to the 1350g she weighs today.
As we are discharged to continue her care from home, me and my husband are very grateful to the entire Neonatal team for their hard work. I pray that the Almighty enables her to live since she managed to survive from being born too early. I also encourage other mothers who have prematures to always have have faith that their small babies can survive when given good care with the help of doctors.
Thank you Neonatal Team.”
Our Neonatal Clinical Officers are one of the key factors to the success of our programme in eastern Uganda. Not only do they provide hands-on, expert and loving care to all our babies and their families every single day of the year, but they spend much of their days teaching and training. They give bedside teaching for the neonatal team of today and tomorrow; nurses, doctors, nursing students and medical students. And they deliver our 14 module Newborn Care Training Course to healthcare workers at health facilities across the region.
Why not support our work, by supporting one of our clinical staff to deliver this life saving care and training?
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