Two months ago today, on April 11th, we posted on Facebook about the
arrival of a new baby at our Beijing Infant Care Home. What may have struck you
about the photo is the size of that baby--you can see he was not much bigger
than our staff's hands! Even the tiny preemie clothes were way too big for him.
At 810 grams, or about 1 pound, 13 oz, he was even smaller than most of
the little preemies that we come across.
This baby came from a new orphanage we just started working with a few
weeks ago. They called us about a newborn that was very weak and small, and
just three days old. Lily, one of our Senior Infant Care managers, promptly
took a train out to see the baby personally. When she got there, he was in an
incubator and on oxygen and an IV. But the hospital was very small and
unequipped to deal with such a small and fragile preemie. It was then
that the weighing of the pros and cons commenced--an all too familiar situation
for many of our medical staff, who are called upon to make these kinds of
decisions every day.
If we left him there at the small local hospital, there was a good
chance he would not survive, but the travel on the train ride was also a risk.
Lily called our staff back in Beijing to discuss the situation.
One thing Lily did to help us make the decision was take him out of the
incubator and watch him in the hospital for several hours. She wanted to
see if he could maintain his O2 sats without any help. After several hours of
observation, removed from all medical support, she saw that he was stable and
felt more confident that she could take him on the train. Had he not done
well, or if his O2 sats were dropping or unstable, she might have decided not
to risk it. But ultimately, it was decided that bringing him to Beijing
would ultimately be his best chance.
Lily gathered up the baby and brought him to the train station. She
kangaroo'd him on the entire nine hour train ride back to Beijing (read more
about Kangaroo Care here), which helped to regulate his body
temperature and keep him warm. During the trip, she gave him very small
amounts (2 ml at a time) of milk by feeding tube.
When she arrived in Beijing, we took Dian immediately to the hospital
to be stabilized. Plus, Lily could tell by then that he was having trouble
digesting those small amounts of milk, from the little feedings on the train.
We knew that he could not tolerate oral feeds yet. The only option was to
feed by IV (TPN) and start oral feeds very gradually.
It's pretty apparent that this one is a fighter. After just a week and
a half, he was up from 810 g to 1020 g (2 lbs 4 oz.)! He stayed in the hospital
for a while more, but has since come home.
He's now in our Beijing Infant Care Home's preemie unit, and we hope to
see him growing bigger and stronger as time goes by.
Just look at him today!
He's got a long way to go yet, but it's been amazing to see such a
dramatic change in a relatively short period of time--just two months!
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