A Very Late Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Well this update comes way too late and I apologise but you will understand when you hear what kind of holiday I had. As I mentioned in my last post, my roommate Beth was home for 10 weeks and it turned into a very busy 10 weeks! In total we received 27 new babies in the 10 weeks that she was away. I did have a few volunteers here to help with the run- around which made life a lot easier but it was still chaos on a lot of days.


In November both of my toddler starfish found forever families! I cannot tell you how amazing this is! Every day I am blown away by each of my starfish and the development they make but to actually find families to adopt them... It's something only God can do! I miss them to bits but know that they are safe and happy with their mommies and daddies and I still have 9 more starfish (10 but one is still in small babies waiting for a space downstairs) ready to make the impossible happen yet again!

A few entries back, I told you about a little girl who was terminally ill with a liver disease. We were told she would never make it to be a year old. Then she turned one and they said "well she will never come off the oxygen" but in October she came off the oxygen for good. Although she still has a lot of medical issues, we have realized that she just may be healthy enough to receive a family! When I first heard about this little girl (exactly a year ago) I had to ask my Director for permission to admit her because of all her medical needs and because we are not really equipped to handle kids like her. Something inside me knew from the moment I heard about her that we needed to take her and love her no matter how long God gave her life for. As I was going through old emails the other day I came across one that I had sent to the director after she had said she didn't think it was a good idea. This is just a part of it:

"On Sunday in church someone was reading from Genesis 22 where Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son. Abraham gets to the point where he is literally about to kill his son when God says "ok stop, now I see that your faith is real". Maybe A***a won't ever come out of hospice or maybe she will only come home for a little while but I really feel that we need to have faith in God and say yes to caring for her. I don't believe that it is a coincidence that the social worker at the hospital first called us about this child. There are many kids like her that we never even know about because they go to other homes or sometimes don't even come out of hospital but for some reason God has made us aware of this one and although we have never cared for a child as sick as she is, we have to have faith in the God who has given her to us! Then today as I was reading my Bible, I was in James 2 19-24 which talks about faith and uses Abraham as an example. I know Door of Hope's main focus is adoption cases but I also know that more importantly than that is to serve God through faith and I STRONGLY believe that He is calling us to just say yes. We do not know what the outcome will be, only God does but we need to act out our faith by loving this girl that God has given to us."

When I look back and remember first seeing this little girl, we were all expecting her to die but because we have been faithful in taking in this sweet little thing, she is now a beautiful, happy, healthy girl who one day will make some people very proud parents and I cannot wait to see the day!!

Christmas was a very busy time and we had six babies in hospital over the holiday. A lot of them came in sick which made it a lot of work, we have one with neonatal sepsis, one came in having seizures, one had gastro, and two others have pneumonia but our sixth little one deserves his own story.

On December 15th we got a call from the hospital saying that they had a birth mother who wanted to give her baby up for adoption. We went through to fetch our new arrival and to meet with the mother. Our little bundle of joy was only 1.7 kg with a perfect little button nose! His mother decided not to give him a name and so we gave him a name that meant "dedicated to God". On Friday (Dec 18th) in the evening, we noticed that our sweet boy was a little bit cold but with some kangaroo care he warmed up and seemed much better. During the night however, he stopped eating and became very week. By 4 am he was very lethargic and would not really wake up. We rushed him through to the hospital where they did all sorts of tests and x-rays to find out what was wrong with him. Eventually it came back to us that our little boy had strep B meningitis. They said he was a very sick little boy but that the antibiotic should start working straight away. The doctors sent him up to the ward and because he was so sick he was also very cold and so they nursed him in an incubator. Before I left the hospital on Saturday night, I prayed to God that I would see him the next day. When I got there on Sunday morning, he was out of the incubator which to me was a sign that he was getting better however as I bent down to give him cuddles, it was like reaching into an ice bucket. I put his hat on, a pair of socks, a pair of pants, a towel nappy, a receiving blanket, a hospital blanket and then both of my hands on top of him to try and warm him up but after 45 minutes with no luck, I went and begged the sisters to put him back in the incubator (I'm not really sure why he came out in the first place since he was no better but that is government hospitals for you!) so they put him back in the incubator but did not even turn it on. I had to plug it in to the wall and heat it up. As our little man got warmer I noticed that he really wasn't breathing well. I asked them to call the doctor but since it was a Sunday, it was only an on-call Doctor and he really couldn't tell me if my baby was responding to the antibiotics or not but he told me that he was stable. Around 6 pm on Sunday evening our baby boy stopped breathing. They had decided when he was admitted that he was a DNR (do not resuscitate- which made me angry!) and so they did nothing to help him. Thankfully he started breathing on his own again which was a miracle to all of us! Unfortunately though, it was all just too much for him and just after 7 pm, my handsome little man took his last breath. Only five days old. Abandoned. Sick. Suffering. Sometimes when I look at it I don't understand why God even bothered to give him life. But then I see things like his perfect little face, I feel his soft skin, I smell the new baby smell, I pour all the love I have into him. I will never understand why God allows things to happen but I know that this little life was for a reason. I loved him and I would do it all over again if I had to.

After the doctor had called his time of death, and the sisters had cleaned him up, I put on some gloves and a plastic apron and went in to see my little man one last time. The room is big and full of all the supplies you need to save a life but they are all still in their place because the doctors have just let my baby die without even giving him a fighting chance. In the middle of the room is an incubator. The one that just moments ago I sat beside, slowly warming it, as I begged God to save my baby. Now it holds the shell, the tiny little body that belonged to such a beautiful soul. I walk over and open the sides, then sliding my hands under my sweet boy, I gently lift him out to wrap him in a blanket. As I sit down in the chair with him held tight in my arms, I can no longer hold back the tears. I weep like a mother who has just lost her child. I rock back and forth and all I can seem to say is "I'm so sorry. I tried. I'm so sorry". As I sit there holding what used to be a precious little life, I feel God wrap His arms around me and around my baby and I know that I was chosen to be there in that moment to love this baby like Jesus would. "You did so well" I tell him, "you were such a fighter and I am so proud of you". I sit there with him for a long while knowing that when I put him down, it will be for the very last time. As I stand to place him back on his bed, I sing Arms of Love. Not really for his benefit but more to remind myself that as I lay him down, I am placing him in the loving arms of Jesus.

The very next day I am at the mortuary. I am sitting in a chair in the waiting room surrounded by strangers who are there for the same reason. I have been here before, many times but it never gets easier. In my lap I have a tiny little sleeper that says "little prince" in the corner. On top of that I have a little knit hat to match the tiny sleeper. When the undertakers arrive, I follow them through to sign for my baby. I give them my ID as well as finger prints and then, like checking a book our of a library, I sign out my baby. They go to the fridge and bring out what most people would think it a packet of frozen fish. Wrapped in brown paper and stiff as can be, they unwrap the package so I can make sure that we have the right baby. Once I know it is my boy, I am free to go. Walking back out into the sunlight and the fresh air, I get into my car and cry some more.

4 days later (just two days before Christmas) we have a memorial service for our little boy. It is always a hard day but it helps to bring everyone here some closure and gives us a chance to say a final goodbye. The worst part of this story though, happened exactly one week after our little man passed away when I got a phone call to tell me that his birth mother had also passed away. A lady staying with the mother phoned to say that she had passed away in a matter of hours after being sick for the first time. An illegal immigrant, this young girl was all alone in South Africa so not only do her parents not know that she had a baby, they don't even know that they have both passed away. We tried everything we could to find contact information for any extended family but had no luck.

There are some parts of my job that are very hard. I do things that I would never wish upon anyone else. I know that God has called me to this and that He gives me all the strength I need. He also gives us 10 times the amount of miracles and blessings as there is heartache and sorrow. I am reminded of His love and faithfulness every time I walk next door to a room full of starfish! I am so blessed! When I watch the work being done at Door of Hope I am so thankful that I can be a part of it. That I can play just a small role in the lives of such important little people. There is really nowhere else that I would rather be. I am living my dream!