Good Results at the Baby-Weighing Session!

I came back from my father’s house on the afternoon of 22nd. The next day was the Growth Monitoring and Promotion (GMP) session, which is difficult to miss. Otherwise I would have spent one more day with my father to take care of him and console him. In the very early morning of the GMP day, I went to all my participants’ houses to invite them to the session. It started at 9 a.m. Out of 19 participants, 17 were present. All of the babies had gained weight. I was so happy that the mothers had taken such good care of their babies! I asked them to keep up the good work! I helped three children to get vaccinated by the government health worker. In my follow-up visits, I found that the absent babies were out of the town. During one of my house visits, I found a baby girl who was suffering from diarrhea. Her mother was not sure what to feed her to get her well. I examined her to see if there were any danger signs, but fortunately there were none. So I advised the mother to feed her oral rehydration solution (ORS) every time the baby defecated. I was happy when the mother herself figured out the cause of her daughter’s diarrhea. She told me that the day before, they all drank packaged mango juice from a local shop. She had given her daughter some of the juice. In Bangladesh, almost all the store-bought juices are artificial – they are made with harmful chemicals. The mother thinks it was the juice that caused her baby’s diarrhea.