Jud turns 1! Benjamin turns 6! Help our family build a NICU in Burundi Africa!

A make-shift incubator for a preemie at Kibuye Hope Hospital in Burundi Africa
where our friend Dr. Alyssa Pfister is on the medical team trying to
build a much-needed NICU and Pediatric Ward in a rural part of
the country. We hope we can help raise enough money for multiple
incubators and oxygen that would be available for the babies in the new NICU. 

   We can’t believe our Sweet Jud turns 1 on February 24th. For many of you who were there with us that day and the days after you know it was a heartbreaking beginning to a dear and precious life. Jud’s severe meconium aspiration caused a pneumo thorax (small hole in his lung) during delivery which combined could have ended his life. I'll never forget looking at Jud's xray the day he was born and his lungs, which should show up as black on an xray, looked like a snowstorm. They were filled from top to bottom with foreign material that was the consistency of tar or bubble gum. But by God’s mercy we had a NICU medical team that was able to ventilate and stabilize him and essentially saved his life!

    His birthday was the beginning of a very long road, but after 28 days in the NICU and then 3 months at home on oxygen his lungs are healing and will one day be “normal” and healthy! But many of you also know this is not the first time that, by God’s mercy, medical  technology has saved one of our children.



On Jud's birthday after he was ventilated
and the NICU put in a chest tube to keep him stable.

 

     Benjamin, who will be 6 on March 27th, was born without a complete Esophagus. This anomaly was a total surprise and a sudden and terrifying entry into the world of neonatal intensive care. Instead of Benjamin's esophagus going straight from his mouth to his stomach it stopped 14 centimeters down from his mouth. Then the rest of the tissue went from his stomach to his lung. So a few hours after he was born he was rushed from Brookwood Hospital here in Birmingham to Children’s Hospital of Alabama.  On day 2 of Benjamin’s life a pediatric surgery team at Children's performed a Tracheoesophogeal Fistula (TEF) repair where they went through his back, deflated his lung and then reconstructed his esophagus. He spent 14 days in the Children's NICU as he recovered from his TEF repair surgery.



Benjamin at 2 days old after his TEF repair at Children's Hospital.
He is ventilated, has a chest tube and is heavily sedated. He was in
the NICU for 14 days.

How humbling to think of the hundreds of hands that touched our Benjamin and Jud to keep them alive and to help care for them during their NICU stays. So how can we celebrate the anniversary of both these boys coming into the world? Well God has revealed an amazing opportunity for our little family to help raise the money to build a much-needed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in one of the poorest countries in the world!

Alyssa Pfister is a doctor who trained here at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and was in our community group at our church during her training. Alyssa has been working and living with an amazing team of doctors and nurses in the small African country of Burundi and serving at both Hope Africa University and Kibuye Hope Hospital. Their hope is to provide teaching to medical students at the hospital and to provide care for infants and children. Alyssa shared with us that their goal is to renovate a room in what is currently an OB ward to become a small NICU with 6 Incubators. Right now the project is small until they can train enough nurses to handle the needs of their smallest patients. The approximate costs for this mini-NICU is estimated to be approximately $1,000. Our hope is that any funds we raise over that will go towards a larger renovation to build a $80,000 pediatric ward. "A large number of our patients are age 1 and under with malaria, pneumonia, malnutrition. We can currently only provide oxygen for one patient at a time. I hope to have oxygen available throughout the peds ward and an oxygen saturation monitor for the nurses to use with the patients," Alyssa told us.

How humbling that in those three months after Jud came home from the NICU we had an oxygen concentration machine, a large oxygen tank, several mini oxygen tanks for when we left the house and our own oxygen saturation monitor. We had as many nasal cannulas (tube that runs the oxygen into the baby's nose) and foot probes as we needed. Unbelievable! And how gracious of God to now, a year later, let us be thankful for the items that we were so heartbroken to have to use.

If our story resonates with you at all we hope that you will give any donation you can to help Alyssa and her team care for the precious babies in Burundi. And for those of you who do not know where Burundi is on the globe...it is a landlocked country in the African Great Lakes region of Southeast Africa and is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzani to the east and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west. There is no Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in this region of the country. Our hope is that we can change that!

Baby Jud

The brothers. Benjamin, Barrett and Jud.

 



Thankful for our family and the chance to help other families in need.