The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations

She wasn’t sure of her gestational age, as most pregnant women in Chad, since so few get first trimester ultrasounds here, or any ultrasound for that matter. She knew she was big for the 7 months she thought she might be, though. Sure enough, her 31 week ultrasound showed she did not have just one baby in her belly… she had three. We live in a world where we know a lot of things ahead of time. We often know when it will rain or when it will snow. We know what afternoon the UPS man should deliver our package. We can know the gender of our baby sooner than ever before. But here, in the developing world, the unexpected has a bit stronger presence in our lives. During maternity rounds, I found her in the labor room lying in bed leaking amniotic fluid and with only infrequent contractions. So we started her on oxytocin, a pain in the bum because we don’t have pumps and so counting the seconds in between drops and writing down each time a woman contracts is how we largely determine