Life Not Lived.

I've seen a dead baby about every other day. It's gotten to the point where the sight of a lifeless infant sitting in its own blood with white lips and a fresh cord dangling from its abdomen doesn't faze me. The body will be in the room, usually encased in the one mechanical incubator the hospital owns...and it will sit there...a fly on the wall. A life not even lived.

The worst part, the thing I can't get over, is watching the baby die. I had to go into the hospital tonight to interview a midwife as a part of the neonatal care study I am conducting. I have interviewed all but one of the maternity ward midwives, grilling them about their knowledge of prematurity - the number one killer of infants in Africa. I haven't had time to analyze my results, but it is alarming how little the midwifes know about premature infants...and the almost complete lack of care that is afforded to them.

But how can you provide an infant with care when you can't afford to buy a watch to take the babies pulse? A premature infant was born this evening, 30 weeks gestation (normal is over 37)...his eyes were fused, his testicles shrunken, his skin transparent and fragile, and his body blue. Once he emerged and the cord was cut, he was left for dead in a plastic crib. But this baby boy refused to accept its fate...he cried a pathetic gasping cry, struggling to inflate his underdeveloped lungs. It was able to turn most of his body pink...meaning he was taking in some oxygen...but his legs remained an abnormal and dusky blue. While another scholar placed the baby in an incubator I ran around the hospital trying to get him oxygen, or pressure support for its lungs...something...anything! We found steroids, but we couldn't find a vein in the baby...so eventually I wound up just shooting the drug into the baby's leg.

As far as I know the boy left for dead is still alive...I don't know if he will be in the morning...or next week...if he were born in the United States he could have survived...

Tonight I watched a baby struggling to live, but knew in reality I was watching him die.

I wish I could save his life. I'll never stop wishing.