Orphaned 4·13·10

April 13, 2010 by admin

How can you look at this kid and not do anything. As soon as we walked into the Jackson House (just outside of Antigua, Guatemala) we knew we had to help…and so we stayed for the next four days (until it was time to fly back to California). We were told to scrub up and help take care of the 20 undernourished/malnourished (both nutritionally and emotionally) babies by feeding and burping them all every three hours…not to mention changing some gnarly diapers and love love loving them. It was emotionally difficult to feed one when 19 others were crying for food and love, hard to put one down when you knew she would fall to pieces in tears, but harder not to, knowing the others we starving or needing to be held. I fell in love with this little one immediately (her name was Angel), she was 2.5months old and only about 3lbs (I was almost 10lbs when I was born) and so so cute and hungry and all skin and bones and just absolutely the smallest thing I have ever seen…Those big eyes melted my heart. Then there were kids like Guadalupe, who was 4 months old and did not know how to eat, having never been breastfed by a mother that was also starving…I would have to force feed her her bottle, practically drowning her in milk as she swallowed more air than food, and had to be burped constantly. It was so adorable to hear the biggest and deepest of manliest burps coming from such a small package being forcefully rocked on my shoulder…and then there were 18 other similar stories.