A Day to Celebrate
On a cold and foggy Tuesday morning, staff in the Maternity Center gather together as they prepare to surprise one unsuspecting mama. Heads turn as they stride uniformly into the Maternity Ward, huddled around something not quite visible. The cluster of nurses slowly parts to reveal Maternity Ward Supervisor, Ruhama Lyanga, holding a cake she’d baked the night before. Ruhama makes her way over to Kanoni, a mama under care in the Maternity Center for just under three months. As they present the cake, Kanoni smiles, her eyes lighting up in anticipation.
Kanoni came to FAME mid-November when her water broke just 26 weeks into her pregnancy. After seeing a doctor she was given antibiotics and steroids to help the baby’s lungs develop. She stayed at FAME for two weeks, before finally giving birth to Imani. While Imani was brought into this world through a normal vaginal delivery, her first few months would be anything but normal.
Born a meager 1.15 kilograms or 2 ½ pounds, Imani was quiet and tired, unable to cry forcefully as most babies do after birth. Imani was placed into one of the infant incubators in our Special Care Nursery (SCN), where she was monitored and fed around the clock. FAME’s SCN has the only incubators and CPAP machine in the district. In order to breathe and slowly gain weight, Imani needed continuous positive airway pressure therapy, a.k.a. a CPAP Machine, for nearly two months. Yet when the time came to take her off the CPAP Machine, the situation took a turn for the worse. While her lungs were continuing to develop, she was struggling to breathe without the assistance of the CPAP Machine — an uncommon situation for premature infants that gain weight and show improvement.
In order to figure out why Imani was still having trouble breathing, FAME staff did an X-ray of her lungs which showed some anomalies. Shortly after, they consulted with Dr. Swanson who runs the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the Arusha Lutheran Medical Centre (ALMC), a private hospital based in Arusha and partner of FAME. Dr. Swanson suggested that the difficulty in breathing was a symptom of bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic lung disease that develops in preterm babies due to the extended use of CPAP and oxygen. This is just one of the many possible complications that arise from premature birth. He recommended a medication regime of steroids for Imani, which helped wean her off the CPAP Machine within a week.
It had been a long three months for Kanoni, and the Maternity Center staff wanted to do something special for her. As a long-term patient, she had become part of the FAME family, and Ruhama wanted to show her just how much all the nurses and midwives care and love her. And now that Imani had been off oxygen for four days, she was clearly looking much healthier, and a celebration was in order.
“I am proud of them because they know how to care for preemies and are confident”
This cake was just as much a celebration for Kanoni and Imani, as it was for FAME staff. In the two and a half months that FAME staff had meticulously cared for Imani, she had grown to 2.25 kilograms or 5 pounds. Every time the Nurses went in to check on Imani they relied on the skills and training they developed during the Nursery Care Workshop, taught by our Maternal Health Coordinator, Leesha Mafuru. Everything from IV fluids, feeding times, and even positioning Imani correctly in a little nest within the infant incubator had to be precisely calculated to keep Imani as healthy as possible.
The Maternity Center filled with warmth and joy as cake was shared between all the mamas and staff. Kanoni held back tears of joy as Ruhama and many of the nurses shared kind words and sentiments. Relief washed over the room, as everyone took a moment to relax from the demanding care they provided over the past couple of months. Imani had made it; she no longer needed special care and now has a bright future ahead of her. Kanoni spent one last day in the Maternity Ward enjoying the company of the staff, before being discharged. She then headed home with her beautiful baby girl.