Earlier this week, a tiny, six pound baby girl received her angel wings. As I have written before, it will never get any easier to lose a child in one of our programs. When the news comes in, it is always heartbreaking, as of course it is always so painful to think of any baby in this world dying without parents who love her.
Read more.
Drew captured LWB’s Medical Team‘s hearts with his very first photo. While his lips were blue, indicating a serious heart defect, he certainly did not seem to struggle with gaining weight! Drew is from an orphanage in Anhui Province, where winters are especially cold and difficult for children with heart conditions.
Even though he had a solemn expression, he did not seem to indicate that he was struggling. When Drew arrived at the hospital with a serious and complex heart defect – Dextrocardia and Complete Endocardial Cushion defects – he was described as a very strong baby with a loud cry. Read more.
Don’t mess with women on a mission! Three intrepid LWB volunteers recently took part in the Flora Women’s Mini Marathon in Dublin, Ireland, to raise money for the children in the Henan Healing Home. Julie Flynn Coleman, the director of LWB’s Healing Homes, her daughter Robyn, and LWB volunteer Gina Hall were part of a crowd of 40,000 women all doing their part for the charity of their choice.
Julie wrote a bit about their day to give those of us who couldn’t be there some idea of the wonderful atmosphere. Read more.
The world is opening up for Daisy. Words and language are the keys to unlock thinking and reasoning, and Daisy has those keys. At four years old she is described at being “good at expressing herself” by her teachers of her Believe in Me Huainan School preschool class. Read more.
A guest blog by Stefani Ellison
The calendar said it was the first day of Spring 2012 but the biting cold was more like mid-winter. I had just entered the children’s section of the SWI I was visiting and the worried nannies brought first to me a child who needed immediate help. They carried in a bundle of heavy quilts. As I peeled back each thick blanketed layer, there was the tiny face of a baby. A baby boy with big and intense eyes fanned by his long thin fingers. This baby boy latched right onto my heart as he reached out and latched my finger with his wee hand. I guessed this child couldn’t be more than 2-3 months old. I was very wrong. He was would soon be two in June. Read more.
When I was waiting to adopt my first child from China in 1999, I read story after story in online forums about the infamous “clothing police” I was sure to encounter on my adoption trip. I was warned about grannies who would come up and yell at me or wag their fingers if my child-to-be wasn’t covered from head to toe even if I thought the outside air temperature seemed fine.
Well, now I can say that many of the clothing police are women I greatly admire. They are devoted foster moms and grandmas and orphanage nannies who have watched far too many children over the years struggle with issues like pneumonia and fevers when they fall sick. As I’ve already covered in my last two posts, many orphanages and foster homes don’t have central heating, and even in the southern provinces of China, the orphanages are quite cold at times. To protect children from the cold and becoming more vulnerable to infection, they are bundled, almost from the very moment that they come into the world. Read more.
Friday was a wonderful and exhausting day in Kaifeng as the LWB 2012 cleft trip entered its final day.
Baby Theo waiting for his turn
Ten surgeries were completed today, which brought the total number of children healed to 49. One baby had to be disqualified from surgery this morning due to infection, but we all agree that 49 lives changed is a wonderful accomplishment in just five days of surgery. Both the US medical team and the China medical team feel that the trip was a complete success, and they are already talking about when they can get together again in the future to help more children in need. Read more.
This has been one of the hardest winters I can remember in all of the years I have worked with orphaned children. As the temperatures drop, we know that pneumonia and other illnesses will spread quickly through orphanages, and we always pray for an early spring. I don’t think many people even stop to think about how fast a sickness can spread in an institution when 20-30 babies live in just one room. And for babies struggling with medical issues already, such as heart defects or breathing difficulties, they are very vulnerable indeed.
Read more.
Yasmin is almost five years old and has been in our Dingyuan foster care program since mid 2009. She is a very energetic girl, and our China foster care manager says she brings joy and lightheartedness to all who encounter her. Read more.
All of the wonderful people who volunteer for LWB know that I have a few rules about going on an official trip. One of them is that you can’t cry when you are in an orphanage, even though I know all too well that it is absolutely overwhelming at times to walk in and see crib after crib, filled with babies living without a mom or dad. The reason for this rule is that I never want any orphanage caregiver to misunderstand our tears. I would never want them to feel that we are crying out of judgment.
Read more.
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