Alex Harrison

My trip was magical. I got so much wonderful experience with NBO and also I came to believe in it as a helpful tool in a new way. I thought very highly of it before, but after the response of the nurses and doctors and social workers in these three institutions, I saw the enormous value of the NBO as a practical means of bringing what they call a “humanitarian” approach into their daily work with infants and their families. You would have been amazed at the response we got.

In El Salvador, we had 40 participants. One Obstetrician already got 5 of his babies forms in to me. Can you believe it? Two neonatologists in that training are from Honduras and want me to come to do a training there. The attendance was smaller in Lima (about 10-15 participants), but the response was even more emotional. The nurses and neonatologists kept hugging me and telling me I had to come back, that what I was teaching in the NBO was so valuable, that they wanted to make a bigger training next time.

They deliver thousands of babies. One of the wonderful NICU nurses (who has been working there for 30 years) showed us an AMOR card in her uniform when we visited the NICU. In the trainings, we had 5 babies in El Salvador and 7 babies in Lima. We got lots of videos. The only problem was that the cute little babies didn’t open their eyes enough to do the tracking! But they all turned to their parents’ voices. We saw two fathers in El Salvador (mothers recovering from C sections) and two mother/father pairs in Lima, one family had two adolescent parents.