LWB Community

Counting Our Blessings on the Twelve Days of Christmas: Our Medical Team

On the eighth day of Christmas, we give special thanks for the incredible team of doctors and surgeons that help LWB both in China and around the world. Many of the children we are asked to help have very complex medical conditions, and we are so fortunate to have medical advisors in many countries who help us make the best treatment plans possible for the kids. One-year-old Evan is a baby who benefitted from the highest quality medical care. He was born with a serious heart defect and was very weak when we first learned about him. Doctors at Fudan University in Shanghai were able to do his first stage operation, and Evan immediately began to thrive. Evan will need his next operation within a year, and we are all hoping that a family will step forward to adopt him so that his next surgery can be done with his very own mom and dad by his side. Evan is currently on China’s shared adoption list, and we are giving him lots of TLC at our Heartbridge Pediatric Unit while he waits for someone to choose him as their son.
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Counting Our Blessings On the Twelve Days of Christmas: Babies!

On the first day of Christmas, we at Love Without Boundaries are giving thanks for BABIES – whether they be smiley babies, loud babies, quiet babies, or more serious babies (like Marshal here). Marshal lives at our Heartbridge Pediatric Healing Unit, where he has been treated for prematurity, cataracts, and hernia surgery as well. We think he looks absolutely dashing in his new glasses and holiday hat. This season is a wonderful time to remember the famous quote by the poet Carl Sandburg:

“A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.”

Until every orphaned baby has a permanent home, let’s keep working together to touch the lives of as many children as we can. Together we can write a story of hope for those who have been abandoned – and show the world that every baby born deserves to know love.
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Matthew: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Matthew is brand new to Heartbridge, having arrived on November 9th. He has the special need of cleft lip and palate, and is in need of some extra calories to help him grow strong enough to have surgery to repair his lip. Normally we would send a child like Matthew to one of our cleft healing homes, however there is something very special about this little boy: He is the twin brother of Heartbridge resident Max, who has been in the home since September 22nd. Max is healing from surgery that he had as a newborn, and we had no idea that he had a twin brother (see photo below)!
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Tickle Me Evan

Adorable Evan was born in December of 2009, and he is quite the little fighter! Evan was born with a heart condition, and you can see in the photo below that although he was a bit blue before his surgery, he was quite capable of stealing hearts. We’re hoping that these photos just might steal the hearts of his future parents!
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Katie: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Six-month-old Katie came to our Heartbridge Pediatric Healing Unit this spring to treat club feet caused by arthrogryposis (a disorder that is causing contracture of the joints in Katie’s hands and feet), and also to help Katie gain weight. At two months of age, she weighed only 2.19 kg or 4.8 pounds. Look how tiny she looks in the picture below!
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Hank: LWB’s Featured Child of the Week

Hank is an adorable seven-month-old baby who has a dazzling smile!  This little boy came to the Medical program when he was only days old.  He was in critical condition and, at three days old, was moved to the hospital.  Hank was born with a urologic defect called anal atresia and immediately received the first of a three-stage surgery.  Without this surgery, Hank would have died within days.  
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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.
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Hannah from Heartbridge

Hannah arrived at Heartbridge on May 14th,  just a few days before our manager Cindy made her mid-month visit.  Hannah has a very complicated set of special needs, with a VSD (hole between the chambers of her heart), Mirror-Image Dextrocardia (her heart is on the right side of her chest), and also Pierre Robin Syndrome.  This is a cranio-facial abnormality in which the lower jaw is much smaller than normal.  In Hannah’s case, this has caused a high-arched palate, cleft lip on the right side, a very small mouth, and her tongue is missing.  
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Running Through China: Hooray for Heartbridge!

What a wonderful way to start our trip! Our 18-bed Heartbridge Pediatric Healing Unit, in partnership with the New Hope Foundation, is truly creating miracles each and every day. The children we send to Heartbridge are the most vulnerable medical children of all –- and yet when you walk through the doors, you are met by children who are so happy. Well, all except maybe for Nathan who cried every time the strangers with blonde hair came near him!
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Shop ‘Til You Drop to Help Emily, Samuel and Many Others!

The 7th Annual Love Without Boundaries “Born in My Heart” Art Auction starts on eBay today (April 22) and runs through April 27. We have over 350 INCREDIBLE items to auction this year, with every penny going to fund surgeries and medical treatment for Chinese orphans. This year we have many beautiful original paintings and prints, porcelain sculptures, a gorgeous array of quilts, calligraphy, scrapbooking pages, amazing photography, embroidery, gift baskets, jewelry, clothing, heritage items (including a reproduction of a terra cotta warrior) and so much more. We even have tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in New York as well as Yankees baseball tickets!

But let’s shift the focus away from the beautiful stuff. This event is really about children like Emily, who is new to LWB and little Samuel, who is one of our “seasoned veterans.”
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