| published 05-11-2007
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Views : 4325 |
Times marked as favorite : 233 |
 The two day old baby looked so tiny in the middle of the full-size ICU bed. The whole left side of her head and her left eye were swollen and bruised, with scratches here and there. Now and then she would stiffen and shake—convulsions probably due to her head injury.
Little Hannah was born on a Saturday night in "Blind Town," the area in Jos where many of the blind people, mostly beggars, live. It's a regular community of its own, with customs, rules, and its own chief. Though Hannah's seventeen-year-old single mother was not blind, she did live there. ...continued
 Hannah's mother, we'll call her Talatu, was herself an orphan. Her father had died when she was little, and her mother died last year. We don't know much about her, but Talatu had frequent seizures in childhood and had always been thought a bit strange. She was impulsive and sometimes violent toward her mother and others. When she became pregnant, she did not want any prenatal care. A midwife saw that she must be nearly due, and offered to help, but Talatu roughly declined and sent her away.
Sometime during night the midwife saw Talatu again, and realized that she had already delivered. But where was the baby? Nowhere to be found. She notified the chief, who got everyone out searching. Several hours passed before someone found Hannah on the far side of the compound wall, on the rocky river bank. Her mother had thrown her over the wall.
The people tried to get Talatu to accept her baby and care for her, but she refused, so another woman looked after her on Sunday. Monday morning, though, Hannah began having seizures, so was brought to Evangel. She weighed 5 pounds 8 ounces. We treated her with phenobarbitol, an anti-seizure drug, and she responded well.
By Friday she was ready to be discharged, but had nowhere to go. Since one of Barbara's gifts is caring for babies, we decided to take Hannah in until adoptive parents could be found. At first she slept most of the time, waking only to eat; she didn't cry the first five days we had her. Was she alright? Was it just the sedative effect of the drug? Then she got sick with a fever and irritability. We had to give her intravenous antibiotics for a week.
 Whether because of all the trauma of getting poked and injected, or the sedation wearing off, Hannah finally began crying-kicking and screaming! A few weeks later, she was acting just like a healthy month-old little girl, mostly eating and sleeping, but sometimes looking around with wide eyes at all the whole world around her.
Within a few months, a pastor and his wife came forward and asked to adopt Hannah. They had no children of their own, and so much wanted this baby. We had tested the natural mother Talatu for HIV and found that she was infected, so we explained to the prospective parents that Talatu might also have HIV and not live long. They considered this but told us they believed God would take care of this and that they still wanted to take Hannah.
 Happy new mother Grace with Hannah, Mike, and Barb
That was almost nine years ago. The pastor and his wife did adopt Hannah, and she turned out to be a happy, bouncy baby girl, with no trace of HIV. Now she's a beautiful elementary school girl and the joy of her parents. They know that God has blessed them with an unmatchable gift.
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