And another baby...

I think I should be careful what I read. Shortly before receiving our HIV positive baby, I read a book by a Christian surgeon who was HIV+. A couple weeks before getting the baby pictured below, whose mother is deaf/mute, I read a book by the daughter of deaf parents. Then yesterday morning, I read an article on a baby who died from shaken baby syndrome and the multiple injuries the abuse caused, and it listed some stats.....that came in useful just a couple hours later when SEDEGES called. In every case God was preparing me and my mind was opened to a different side of the suffering in this world.

I really don't have a good reason of why we said yes this time, having said no to another the day before. For once, we actually had forewarning that this was going to be a difficult case. SEDEGES said the baby was being released from the hospital from multiple injuries pointing towards child abuse. We still don't have room. Two babies leave "soon", but soon here has an entirely different meaning. And it had only been 8 days since a new baby. Anyway, we said yes and within an hour he was in my arms. He's about 4 months old.

It was awful reading through and trying to understand the many medical reports he arrived with (side note: we're grateful he actually came with so much background info). One from July listed 8 prescribed medicines and no less than 14 diagnoses (I'm translating, hopefully correctly, from Spanish): meningitis, seizures, hygroma, moderate intraventricular hemorrhaging, moderate hydrocephaly, generalized hypotonia, intracranial pressure, psychomotor delay, anemia, oral thrush, cardiac insufficiency, bronchitis, fractured left rib, and-finally!-possible battered baby syndrome. A couple weeks before a forensic report also listed multiple bruises, from head to toe, and that he was at imminent risk of death. By the time I finished, I was nervous to even have him in my care! He was also a little bit cranky...who knows from what? The main thing we notice holding him is how "floppy" he is, from the hypotonia, which makes him kinda hard to hold (although not quite as challenging as our Benito, with CP).

But thankfully, I was out till late with him at our pediatrician and he seems pretty much recovered from all the above. He still needs to visit our neurologist though. Hopefully his need for brain surgery, as listed on one of the reports, is wrong. Poor baby! He has a 3 year old sibling that I want to check on as soon as possible.

This is definitely the dark side of our work, seeing what humans in their sin nature are capable of. Still, I will not throw the first stone. Living my comfortable life, I cannot even begin to imagine surviving the incredible stresses, crisis, and trauma that make up the everyday lives of the parents of our kids. Apart from the Lord, we are all doomed to commit such atrocities.