Sunday, August 23, 2009

Blessing Update

Blessing has been at the hospital for 9 days now. She's at the NICU so she can be fed through a NG tube. She's starting to put on a little bit of weight. She's up to about 6lbs 6oz. We have a couple special Cleft Palate bottle nipples coming in tonight with a visitor and hope that she'll be able to suck from them. If not we'll either syringe feed her or the hospital said they'll show us how to insert the NG tube and feed her with the tube. Either way the doctor said she should be able to leave the hospital by mid-week.

Here are a couple pictures from the ICU today.


Sunday, August 16, 2009

Blessing

I got a call Friday morning that there was a cleft palate baby who was in dire need of foster care. She was a month old and was malnourished because her mother was not able to feed her. So we agreed to take baby "Blessing" in until she could gain some weight and hopefully have surgery to repair her birth defect. As I type this she is at a local hospital getting fed a high protein diet for a few days so she can put on some weight (she was just under 6lbs when she got here).


Of course the boys were excited to jump in and help out. Here is Kobe trying to feed her with a conventional bottle. Not very easy...


Colton was helping clean up the mess Kobe made.

Such big eyes...


Since it has been awhile since we've given an update I thought I'd throw in a couple extra pictures. Jamie and the boys helped out in July and the first two weeks of August with ELWA Academy's enrichment program. They worked with some of the students helping them to improve their reading. They found it to be challenging to teach children to read when their phonics are so different from American English. I think they enjoyed it though and may try to help out during the school year.
Our typical Saturday includes a visit to the Acres of Hope orphanage. Last Saturday we also visited the newly constructed Addy's Hope Orphanage (hopefully Kami will have some pictures up soon...). The new facility looks great, complete with solar and wind power generation. Here's Christopher with a few of the kids.

We brought some "chiclets" for the kids. So hard to keep gum in your mouth...
All for now.