LWB Community

Gentle Zachary

Waiting on the shared list for his family to find him is a very special little boy named Zachary who impresses everyone he meets with his gentle, warmhearted nature. Maureen Brogan, our cleft surgery coordinator, met Zachary during our 2010 cleft surgery trip and wanted to share her impressions of this lovely boy from Fujian.

Zachary had his cleft lip and palate repaired during our 2010 cleft surgery trip and was featured in several blogs about the trip (Day Two, Day Three, and the final day). However, he has a severe protrusion of his front teeth and gum. Despite this deformity, he is a handsome boy. He needs an orthodontist or oral surgeon to start moving his jaw and upper teeth into the proper position. This procedure and the required braces are not available in China, and his best hope for a bright future is adoption. Read more.

Counting Down Our Top Ten Photos of 2011: Scotty Smiling

We first met Scotty in his rural orphanage in Guizhou Province, one of the poorest regions in China. He was so tiny and weak that his cry was almost inaudible, and his nannies explained that he wasn’t able to eat easily due to his cleft lip. We knew that he needed to be moved to one of our healing homes as quickly as possible, and so we phoned our home manager in Fujian, who asked how soon he could get there.

This photo, coming in at #5 in the voting for our Top Ten Photos of 2011, was taken just a few weeks after Scotty had arrived to our healing home. It is pretty obvious from this photo how he felt about having his own dedicated nanny, good formula, and essential cleft bottles at his disposal. We are so happy to report that Scotty went on to not only find healing, but also his very own adoptive family in late 2011! Read more.

Counting Down Our Top Ten Photos of 2011: Emily Learns to Crawl

Coming in at #9 in our Top Ten Photos of 2011 is the unstoppable Emily. Baby Emily came into LWB’s hands from an orphanage in Fujian Province. She was born with a medical condition requiring a very specialized surgery. We were so grateful when Dr. Ngan with MedArt agreed to take her case, and Emily traveled to Hong Kong to undergo a very complex operation.

This photo was taken in May, about one month after returning to our Heartbridge Healing Home, a unit for babies who need more specialized care. At 14 months, finally able to spend some time on her tummy, Emily wasted no time learning how to “army crawl” around the room. Read more.

Blaise: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Sweet little Blaise from the Fujian Healing Home is in the hospital once again with pneumonia, and he is very sick. He was also hospitalized in January with pneumonia and bronchitis. This poor little guy has been having a rough time the last few months!
Read more.

Darling Dalton

Hi, I am Dalton and I’m three and a half years old!

I enjoy spending my days playing with toys, dancing, and singing. Going to school (at LWB’s Believe in Me — Jinjiang school) is also an important part of my day. At school I can introduce myself to others using my first and last name, and I get to exercise and play with other children.  I know my colors and am learning to follow directions well.
Read more.

2010 Cleft Trip – final day

Saturday saw many more children being discharged from the hospital. The nannies had their babies all bundled up and ready to head for the train station for their journeys home. The parents of the rural kids we were able to heal were emotional as they thanked our team for helping their children. Our staff in China were deeply moved by their words.

The medical team from the US was trying their best to hurry out of Fujian before Typhoon Meigi came ashore. They were delighted to find that several caregivers and babies would be traveling with them to the airport. Maureen Brogan wrote the following: Read more.

Day Four of the 2010 Cleft Surgery Trip

Dr. Ness and Dr. Martin deserve Superman nicknames today as they did five bilateral cleft surgeries, which made for a very intense day. The repairs look wonderful, and we are so grateful that the kids are receiving such beautiful repairs. We wanted to share this before and after photo of Lianne (just a day after surgery), so you can see what an artist he is in the OR. (I did remove a bit of the blood from her nose with a photo tool, but the rest is all from Dr. Ness!) Her aunty had changed her out of her little blue hospital gown back into her pink sweater and hat, and I think this is the first time we have had a baby in the same outfit for a before and after shot! Read more.

The 2010 Cleft Surgery Trip is Underway!

Social media experts always advise to “keep your blogs brief” and “make it shorter”, and we have tried to do that with our blogs over the last year, but today I honestly don’t want to be brief. : -) The 2010 LWB Cleft Surgery Exchange is officially underway, and I hope you will feel as I do that every child deserves a moment in the spotlight since many have traveled so far for their surgeries. These trips involve months of planning, so many incredible donors, and a wonderful commitment by the orphanage caregivers, doctors and nurses, and so I want to make sure we report as much as possible to thank everyone who made this trip a reality. 
Read more.

Singing for Song

Sing to the mountains, sing to the sea !

Our sweet Song has been offered another $1000 in grant money towards his adoption…for a total of  $2500! The outpouring of love for this special boy from Fujian continues (please see our blog from July 5, “Grants for Adam and Song,” for more background on him). We are so overjoyed for him.

This little guy has the whole package:  humor, charm, looks and wit!  He is just “BRILLIANT” (the word used by our volunteers who met him).
Read more.

Help Us Make the Fujian Healing Home a Reality

Available Soon: A beautiful, airy 8-9 bedroom, 6 bath villa in lovely Fujian Province with a spacious garden. Perfect for a host of babies and their loving nannies!

One of the main purposes of our recent trip to China was to finalize the details for our fourth healing home – this one located in the Fujian Province. This new home will be a combination of our cleft healing home and our Heartbridge healing unit models – with one floor dedicated entirely to vulnerable babies with cleft and one floor dedicated to children with other medical needs, such as preemies, those born with heart disease, etc. The need for these homes continues to increase, as almost every orphanage we spoke with on this trip told us that 98% of the children now being abandoned have medical needs. As we stood in the orphanage infant/baby rooms on this trip, we clearly saw this reality. Every crib is filled with babies with medical issues, ranging from heart defects to spina bifada to cleft lip and palate. In the past it was already a daunting task for an aunty to care for 10 to 15 “healthy” newborns at once. Now their jobs are even more difficult as they attempt to care for the same number of babies, but ones with often serious medical needs.
Read more.