Baby Weighing

Last week we did a lot of Maternal/Child Health activities which was amazing. We started the week off with some nutrition, breastfeeding, hygiene, and then finished up with a trip to the mountains to weigh babies and give nutrition consultations. We drove up in our Peace Corps vehicles which are white land rovers that can seat 12 people pretty comfortably. The village was probably 10 to 15 miles away but took 45 minutes as we had to drive through a herd of cows and on some very rocky dirt roads. After waiting a while after arrival the mothers started arriving with their babies for us to weigh. We were divided up into groups and with two other trainees we weighed five babies. The babies, and children since any child in the village under 5 had to be weighed, were placed in a sack with holes in it for their legs and then hung from a scale like you would see at a grocery store to weigh produce. After weighing the kids we had to chart their weight and compare it to their weight from the past month to see if they had adequately increased in weight. Out of the five kids I weighed with my group only one had increased enough. We had consultations with the mothers of all the kids after the weighing about things they could do to help the growth of their children. Most of the kids were just getting beans, tortillas, and maybe some soup three times a day so we mostly just talked to them about trying to add some bananas and two snacks between the main meals. They don’t have access to a lot of variety so there weren’t a lot of large changes we could recommend but hopefully they will be able to make the small changes to have healthier children. We unfortunately won’t be back to the same community to see how the kids grow but this was definitely an activity I would like to do once I get to my site. It happens once a month and I would really like to be able to work with the monitors who weigh babies and give the consultations to help them improve the advice they are giving to the mothers.

As for my site, I will be finding out in two weeks where I will be spending my two years. I’m really looking forward to finding out and getting to know my new community. Although I’m excited to move on I’m also really going to miss my family and the community here in Yarumela where I’ve been for FBT. This is the first time my family’s hosted a volunteer as this is the first time the volunteers have been split up and some of them have been placed outside of the main city where we have our training. It’s hard to explain to people that although there are eight of us here right now not one of us will actually be staying for two years to work. I will definitely come back to visit and I think it will be nice to have ‘homes’ all over Honduras.