At our Beijing baby home, we have two preemie rooms.
These infants, who were born early and didn’t have a full term to grow, are
some of the most fragile babies in our care. They require constant monitoring
to help them maintain a stable body temperature, develop healthy lungs, put on
weight, and grow stronger day by day. Let’s introduce you to some of our
littlest residents.
Little Fei came to the baby home when he was two weeks
old, weighing only 1.61 KG (about three and a half pounds). As a result of the
non-stop care of his nannies and some extra hours of Kangaroo Care, he’s gained
more than two pounds in the past six weeks. He now weighs 2.72 KG, or about six
pounds! These seemingly small gains in weight are significant wins for our
medical staff, who are constantly focused on making sure these infants continue
to grow.
Two of our littlest babies just arrived in mid-November:
Xin and He. Little Xin has reached a weight of 2.78 KG, gaining 0.67 KG since
she joined us two weeks ago. Thankfully, apart from being premature, she has no
other serious issues.
Little He has a cleft lip. She just arrived a few days
ago, weighing only 2.01 KG. Both He and Fei still need to gain weight and get
stronger before they can have their first cleft surgeries.
When you see a tiny little preemie for the first time,
sometimes with fingernails smaller than a grain of rice, fingers thinner than
shoelaces, and not one gram of baby fat, it can be hard to imagine that with
the right care and nurturing, they can eventually grow into strong, chubby
babies and eventually fully-grown, healthy adults. Love, care, feeding, and
careful monitoring can change their condition drastically.
Just look at Hui, Yang, and Yu: they all came to us as
little preemies.
Hui arrived in April of this year, when she was just two
weeks old. After helping her grow a bit, we were able to arrange heart surgery
for her. She came back to the baby home over a month ago, and is now recovering
in our preemie room.
Little Yu is about the same age as Hui, and came to us in
May. Look at those tiny arms…
…and how they’ve changed!
Yang is the oldest of the three of them. She’ll soon be
celebrating her fist birthday. Here she is in her first weeks with us:
And here she is just a few months later:
As we highlighted in this month’s featured child story
about baby Jia, it’s not always major surgeries that can save these babies. It’s
all the care and monitoring that the nannies and medical staff can provide at
our homes.