2011 has been a very eventful year already for Suzanne Damstedt, an LWB volunteer who directs LWB’s Orphanage Assistance and Nutrition programs! Many LWB supporters will remember that Suzanne entered a contest sponsored by Ford Focus to win $10,000 for infant formula (“Focus on Formula in 2011″). With your support and votes, Love Without Boundaries was one of the lucky winners!! On top of that initial $10,000, Suzanne then was given the opportunity to drive a brand new Ford Focus 10,000 more miles around the United States for the opportunity to raise even more money for the babies in our nutrition programs.

Over the weekend, Suzanne met the challenge and completed her drive of 10,000 miles! Her goal was to match Ford’s donation and raise an additional $10,000 for the Preemie and Special Formula fund. However, the donation deadline is coming up on April 14, and Suzanne needs your help to reach that goal. If you can help, please visit her blog, Focus on Love Without Boundaries, to learn more about her journey and her dedicated quest to raise funds for the babies in LWB’s Nutrition program. You can donate to this cause directly from her blog or at LWB’s website.  Thanks to everyone who has supported this wonderful cause to help fill babies’ tummies!

Suzanne and her trusty Ford Focus

I want to introduce you to one wonderful young man and some very cute babies!

This is Brady, who lives in Idaho in the United States.

He has just finished his senior year in high school. In order to complete this, he was required to do a Senior Project.

For his project, he wanted to do a fundraiser to help with the nutrition program. When we were contacted, we decided to have him do his fundraiser to earn money for formula for babies at Heartbridge. He did his fundraising and then did a presentation as part of his project.

Levi Then . . .

Levi Now!

Honor Then . . .

Honor Now!

A special thanks goes out to Brady for this special help to these very vulnerable babies, who need this special Preemie formula so they have a better chance to grow. We just placed an order for Preemie formula to be sent to Heartbridge, using up the last of Brady’s donation. Any help to this Preemie fund for future orders would be most appreciated.

Suzanne Damstedt is the Orphanage Assistance Director for Love Without Boundaries. She lives in Washington State with her husband, Darrell. They have 8 children: 6 bio kids and two daughters adopted from Shantou, Guangdong Province and Lishui, Zhejiang Province.

Success can be sweet. When you’ve put yourself out there and success comes along – it’s a sweet reward. Well here’s a sweet reward for our Jinjiang Nutrition sponsors.

This little peanut was failing to thrive so her nannies asked for Isomil formula to help her. Two months on her new formula and she’s gained weight! She weighed 17 lbs in late December and now tips the scales at 19 lbs. She’s doing so well her nannies have asked for additional formula so she can keep giving us that sweet reward of gaining weight. Now that’s what we call success!

Thank you Jinjiang Nutrition sponsors!!!

Mary Helen lives in upstate NY with her daughter adopted from Fuling SWI, Chongqing.

When I was waiting for my daughters to come home, I always hoped that they had a warm body and a full tummy.

It’s comforting to see that thanks to our many kind and thoughtful sponsors of the Love without Boundaries’ Nutrition program, we are able to see warm bodies and full tummies for ourselves.

We receive pictures of these precious little babes growing stronger and healthier day by day. I don’t know about you, but I can never get enough of seeing their healthy little faces!

THANK YOU!

Sandi Peiffer
Nutrition Coordinator

I was happy to get these pictures this week that showed different babies, different ages, different expressions with their bottles. Formula is such a basic need for these babies. I want to thank those who help these vulnerable children with such a basic need.

Isn’t this baby’s eyes, looking up at her ayi, just beautiful?

A smile and a mouthful!

And last but not least, some very little ones!

Eat up kiddos; we want to see you growing and growing!

Suzanne Damstedt
Nutrition Director

A few orphanages that we work with had not done testing yet when we reported earlier. We have been back in contact and the results follow:

Foshan Shunde, Guangdong: The children have been examined, and the orphanage reports that all are fine. 

Fuyang, Anhui: Two babies have tested positive for kidney stones. Both of these children arrived at the orphanage about one month ago. All of the other children are fine, drinking Nestle formula, and we assume that this is a situation that arose because of formula given before the children came to the Fuyang orphanage. 

Huainan, Anhui: The children have been examined and two babies are mildly affected. They are being treated in the orphanage.

Nanchuan, Chongqing: The children have been examined and the orphanage reports all are fine.

Xiushan, Chongqing: All the children have been examined…the report is not yet back but they do not anticipate any problem since they use Nestle formula exclusively.

Deyang, Sichuan: They will be testing soon but do not see any obvious problems.

As mentioned before, it seems likely that this problem goes back to 2006 and we have also seen unconfirmed reports that children adopted in 2005 have been affected. There is no way to know for certain if your child ever received tainted milk products (either infant formula or adult milk powder), so please check with your pediatrician if you have any concerns; particularly if your child has experienced urinary tract infections. We will continue to update our blog as we receive information.   

Jan Champoux 

Nutrition Director

We continue to check on orphanages where we’ve provided assistance this year.  Here is information from several more orphanages:

Qingyang (Gansu) said they appreciate our concern for the babies.  They use Mengliu (recalled brand) but will switch to a different brand now. They told us they have examined their babies, and they all seem fine.  They are receiving a shipment of Nestle formula thanks to the Qingyang adoptive parent group.

Wuchuan (Guangdong) said they use Nestle, which has tested safe; the babies are doing well.

Yangjiang (Guangdong) said they use Jingding (recalled brand) but haven’t found problems with the babies.

Yifeng (Jiangxi) said they feed Mengliu (recalled brand) to the babies. All their babies were examined and no problems found.

Laura Baldwin
Special Projects Director

In Anhui, our formula programs include:

Dingyuan: orphanage

Fuyang: foster care and orphanage

Huainan: some children in orphanage

Xiaoxian: foster care

Cleft healing home: all children

In Chongqing:

Nanchuan: orphanage

Xiushan: orphanage

In Fujian:

Qingliu: orphanage

Jinjiang: orphanage

In Gansu:

Dingxi: orphanage

In Guangdong:

Gaoming: orphanage

Shantou: orphanage

Shunde: orphanage

Qujiang: orphanage

In Henan:

Kaifeng: foster care

In Jiangxi:

Shangrao Ling: some children in orphanage

In Sichuan:

Deyang: orphanage

In most cases LWB does not provide 100 percent of the formula that an orphanage uses, but at this time we do not know of any orphanage in our nutrition program that uses Sanlu for their own formula purchases. No problems have been reported within our nutrition programs.

Adopting parents may wish to bring formula from home: whatever brand your pediatrician recommends should be fine. If you know your child is currently receiving Nestle formula, Carnation Good Start may have the most similar taste. If you wish to purchase formula in China, Nestle Nestogen and Lactogen are readily available in most cities and will have a more familiar taste to your babies. If your baby doesn’t care for his or her new western formula, a small amount of sugar may help as Chinese formulas tend to be sweeter. Just be sure to wean off the extra sugar within a few weeks.

Jan Champoux

Nutrition Director

]]> http://www.lwbcommunity.org/formula-recall/feed 3 http://www.lwbcommunity.org/making-a-list-checking-it-twice http://www.lwbcommunity.org/making-a-list-checking-it-twice#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:09:23 +0000 chinalwb http://lwbblog.com/?p=810

No, we’re not talking Santa Claus here, just our wonderful nutrition managers! Our local managers have the very important job of visiting the orphanage or foster homes where we have nutrition programs to weigh and measure each child so we can make sure they are all healthy and gaining weight.

This little fellow from our program in Gaoming, Guangdong, is obviously doing quite well. Pictured is one of the orphanage directors who weighed the babies herself while our manager, Kelly, took down the information.

This is our manager Yan, who monitors our children in Fuyang, Anhui. It is important to get each child’s height as well as their weight, in order to make sure they are healthy. We note the birth date and any special need as well, and check each child on Chinese growth charts.

A cleft-affected baby in Dingxi, Gansu, obviously thought this pose was much too undignified. A little photo editing was needed before including him in our quarterly update for that orphanage. He is a little guy, but we were able to determine that his weight is proportional to his height. With our next update we will check to make sure that he is following a consistent growth curve.

Last and definitely least, here is my new puppy, Ellie. Our local vet had some puppies of unknown lineage that he was trying to find families for. In true LWB fashion, we chose “the runt” so we could nurture and fatten her up. I’m sure you will all be thrilled to know she has gained three pounds in a week and a half and is now strong enough to vault over the baby gate I was using to keep her out of the kids’ bedrooms (she has quite an appetite for socks!). Good nutrition is a wonderful thing! Now I just have to find a five-foot-tall baby gate.

Jan Champoux 

Nutrition Director