Hospital

I thought that you might also want to know what was going on in the hospital as well as in the orphanage. Our first day in the hospital was last Thursday, January 15th. The first day in the hospital was really hard for me and made me question what we were doing here, just a little. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and no one would tell me, it was so frustrating for me! But, the next day I got some explanations as to what exactly we were to do when we found a baby or little kid and from there it has been smooth sailing. I've loved every minute of it! The first few days we split into groups of two, we have two students in our group who have been here before, Katie and Melissa. Melissa is our group facilitator and Katie is here doing research on us and our personal progress here in Romania. So half the group went with Melissa and half went with Katie, but after a few days we started going in groups of two, usually Justin and I are together. There are 8 floors in the hospital so we all take a few floors. Justin and I have been starting at 8 and working our way down. When we get to the floor we go find a nurse and say, "Aveți copii fară mama?", which literally translated means, "Do you have any children with out mothers?". Then the nurse either tells us, "no, they're are no kids without mothers on this floor" or she takes us to the kids. Usually we know which floors have kids on them and where they are, from visiting with them the day before, but we still always make sure to ask, they like it a lot better when we do that. Then we go in, if it is a little baby we change their diaper and clean them up a bit with a wet wipe and sometimes even change their clothes if they're really dirty. Then we spend anywhere from 15-45 minutes with them, holding them and playing with them and trying to make them smile. If the child is older then we attempt to talk to them and depending on their age we sometimes color pictures together, play with balloons, or draw, we even played Uno with one boy this week. Then we move on to the next child.

I found this little boy on Tuesday whose name is Marian Rosca, they call him Rosca though, who I've become attached to already. He is only a few weeks old and super cute. It is kind of sad though because he hardly ever smiles, I had only seen him smile once all week until yesterday when I got four smiles in one day! I was thrilled. Also, he wouldn't look at me very much all week until Friday, he would just stare at the white ceiling the whole time, but yesterday he kept looking at me a lot which I really loved. He was on floor 5 for most of the week and when I went to go visit him on Thursday he wasn't there and I was sad because I thought he had left the hospital, which probably would have actually been a good thing because that would probably mean he wasn't sick anymore. But when I went to his room I asked one of the mom's who'd been in there with us this week where he had gone and she said they moved him to the ICU...oh no! Interestingly enough we are allowed to go to the ICU and hold the babies there, we just have to be careful because sometimes we annoy the nurses. Well I decided that I would be brave and go down and see him and I'm so glad that I did. There was a nurse in his room and she was really nice and had me hold him while they gave him his breathing treatment (he contracted bronchitis I think while he was in the hospital) and while they fed him (he has a feeding tube up his nose). It was really special for me and I was really glad that I could be there to hold him. Usually during his treatments and feeding time he doesn't get held, he just lays in his crib and a breathing treatment can be pretty scary for a baby who is only a few weeks old. I'm getting really attached to him and although I don't want him to be sick anymore I can't help, but having the desire for him to still be there on Monday when we go back. I don't know where his mother is, I'm assuming he will go to an orphanage when he leaves the hospital, but I don't know for sure. Some of the babies that I've met at the hospital have actually come to our orphanage after they got better.

Anyways, I love the hospital too and look forward to going every day. We've met some really adorable babies and some really fun kids. And as much as Justin may pretend that he doesn't like holding all the little babies, he always asks me when I'm holding one of the babies if it is his turn yet. We're having a great time and we've only been working for one week so far. I have definitely had some very frustrating moments, but the sweet moments outweigh all of the bad.