First Hugs

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Today started out with a shopping expedition. We were looking for a music player for the First Hugs room. A quick trip to Wal-Mart and we met with success. Our friend William, who translates our quarterly reports and was our translator for our visit last year, joined us in Gracie's Room for the day.

Our little preemie baby is doing so well! QiRui, our Gracie's Room. First Hugs supervisor, said that our wee one drank 50 ml of milk yesterday whereas before that, the most she drank before that was 30 ml. And this afternoon when Moya fed her, she drank almost 30 ml. Patience and wearing her in a sling is really helping.

A little boy we are calling Christopher is quite the bruiser!!He is one healthy looking little fella. He has a cleft palate but no cleft lip. He had quite a messy diaper this afternoon and after Krista pointed it out to QiFei, it was bath time! The kids are bathed in a sink in the "milk room" donated by the Lange family whose daughter Lily was adopted from XinXiang last year. There is a powerful heating lamp above the sink so the kiddoes stay warm while being bathed.See the picture for our beautiful Christopher enjoying his bath.

After our lunch, ( we are enjoying all our lunches at the orphanage and they are so amazing. Today's favorites: pork buns, broccoli and garlic, eggs with tomato, and lotus root and pork. So yummy!!) we explored the orphanage a bit. We found the room with little, little in the beginning of the name ( Yes, Moya can read that character but only because it is part of her daughter's name!!). There were 11 babies in the room for teh "little littles", many who were severely disabled. Krista spotted a preemie who had spina bifida. She was worried if he stayed there without special care, he might not survive. Meanwhile Moya was trying to stop a very blue baby from crying. This little one obviously had a heart issue. A short conversation later and we had approval to move these two babies to our First Hugs Room. We will have two more kids then normal but we know some children will be adopted soon and we know these teenies need us!!

We also saw some other rooms in the orphanage with older disabled kids and later saw some older toddlers playing outside at the playset. They were just loving the trampoline. Great to see joy in the midst of the orphanage.

Moya and Krista met with the director, along with Fei Fei - the woman in charge of adoptions at the orphanage -as translator. It was a very productive meeting. We discussed some changes we wanted to see- simple things like a diaper changing location, washing hands after changing babies, germ awareness, and installing a mirrored half wall with bar as we have in our other locations. We were satisfied that this relationship will continue to grow and we will continue to see great improvements in the care provided. I think we have said before that the difference in what we see now compared to one year ago is striking. But we will continue to work together to improve things.

Moya, Krista and Cathy