#74

Tuesday afternoon, a young woman brought her very small baby to the orphanage.  She stated that she wanted to leave the tiny baby girl here.  The mother was detached, unemotional, seemed embarrassed about the child, and did not have any desire to have this burden in her life.  She removed a soiled piece of fabric being used as a diaper, but had nothing to replace it with.  I ran inside to get a diaper and handed it to the mother.  She looked at me as if I had done something wrong.  I realized she didn’t know how to diaper her child, so I gently showed her how.  The baby’s cries of hunger turned to desperate screams.  The mother offered her nothing.  I asked if she had been breastfeeding.  She pulled her shirt up and shoved her breast at the baby, who eagerly suckled.  I asked when she had fed her last, and the mother informed me that she had ‘just done it that morning’.  It was late afternoon, and the 17 day old child was starving.  After a moment, the mother pulled her shirt down, and for a few moments, the crying stopped, but then began again.  I asked if I could get a bottle for the baby and some food for the mother.  Lunch food was all gone, so I quickly made Ramen for her, and took the bottle to the baby.  While the mother ate, I tried to feed the small one.  She only took a small amount of formula, and then began to cry again.  Her mother said she was crying because she wanted candy.  I thought she was joking.  She was not.  The mother had fed the baby candy and Gerber baby food in an attempt to not breastfeed her child.  We sent the mother home with food and money to come back the next day with the father, because we needed his permission for the baby to stay here.  When I went inside to get clean clothes for the baby, the complexity and injustice of the situation hit me in the heart.  I began to cry, weeping for this small one who desperately needed someone to care for her.  I wept for the mother, so young and so lost.  I wept because Hurricane Tomas was approaching, and this mother had a small shack in Cite Soleil.  I couldn’t bear the thought of this helpless child being in that place in the coming storm.

The family came back on Wednesday.  The father is much older than the mother.  He has children with other women.  He lives near the mother, but has no way to support either of them.  The baby continued squalling, and again, the mother denied her nourishment.  I fed the mother in hopes that she would recognize the hunger of her child.  She said she was ‘sick of having to feed her’.  I went inside and made a bottle and came out and began to feed the sweet baby girl.  This time she took a bit more, and then nestled in to sleep in my arms.  Pierre continued to speak with the parents, explaining about adoption, explaining the information needed from both parents.  He wrote the answers to the questions on the intake form.  The parents signed it.  I asked if there was anything else they’d like to tell us about themselves, their families, so that their daughter would know more about them.  They both stared blankly at me and said nothing.  We always take a photo of the child with the birth family, and so I handed the child to her father while I went inside to get the camera.  No smiles, only uncomfortable hands holding the silent child.

I carried Sherlande, beautiful, tiny Sherlande, into the nurse’s office to be checked.  She is very small.  Has no body fat on her small frame.  Her eyes appear larger than they are because of her small head.  The nurse pronounces her healthy, and asks the parents a few more questions.  When I returned from putting the form in the office, the parents were gone.  And there was precious Sherlande, held in the arms of a nanny, welcomed into the family here.  Grace-filled, loving hands, caring for this precious one, knit together in her mother’s womb, a masterpiece from the Creator.  Thank you Jesus, for sending her to us.