#Detroit free press crossword puzzle series#

Which explains why we now spend hours chronicling Nadie’s attempts at rolling over, or pointing as she kicks the little plastic shapes that hang from a mobile, or making noises to elicit the toothless smile that lights up her face and all the faces looking back at her. Her head size (therefore her brain) has increased dramatically. Her blood levels have risen into normal territory. Her anemia, with iron drops, has gone away.

His staff literally cheers out loud as Nadie’s weight has risen from 7 pounds, to 8 pounds, to nearly 10 pounds. I need to salute a Michigan physician named Marty Levinson, who, without as much as a glance at his busy schedule, immediately agreed to see Nadie when I emailed him from Haiti, and has overseen her comeback ever since. Here we are, undressing her in the doctor’s office, placing her on the scale, and rooting for a higher number.īy the way, about that doctor thing. Here we are, strapping Nadie into a car seat, pulling a little shade over top so the sun doesn’t make her squint and cry. I defiantly proclaimed, “I’m going to wait until I’m 30!”īut here we are, well into that decade, buying Huggies, pack and plays, bottle warmers. I remember as a kid asking my parents how old you had to be to have kids, and they said they had theirs in their 20s. Although we have overseen more than 70 kids through the doors of the Have Faith Haiti Mission & Orphanage since taking it over in 2010, we have never had a child so young.Īnd never at our ages. Those of you who have raised children no doubt recognize this behavior. We sound like dolls who have their “talk” button permanently pushed.

#Detroit free press crossword puzzle series#

Like the sinking of our vocabulary into a series of repeated infantile sentences, like “You’re a hungry little girl, aren’t you? Yes! You’re a hungry little girl, aren’t you?…” Like the feeling my wife and I suddenly have when we wake up, where the first thought is “How’s the baby doing?” Like the sudden evaporation of time as we stare for hours at her incredibly expressive face. That explains how she ended up in Michigan, and our house. After conferring with doctors in the U.S., we decided the best thing would be to get her here for a few months and try and address her serious, potentially life-threatening issues. We immediately took her to the hospital, where blood work confirmed malnourishment and anemia. She weighed just 7 pounds, was lethargic, barely responsive, and had conjunctivitis that was swelling her eyelids and filling her eyes with fluid. We were told she had been fed little beyond sugar water for the first six months of her life.

Here is the how and why: Her name is Nadie, and she was brought to the orphanage we operate in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from a village outside Miragoane. This isn’t supposed to be happening, but it is, to my wife and me, a baby girl, with all the squeals, shrieks, coos, hiccups, big eyes, soft breathing, and happily waving hands and feet of an infant, who has no idea how she got here and no idea why. An infant wailing, me lifting her over my shoulder, just above a small towel, and tapping her back until she - happily for her, not so great for me - burps out a glob of goo.

A man my age, warming up baby formula, peeling back dirty diapers, holding my nose as I deposit them into a bag. Home Tribune Premium Content Lifestyle Tuesdays with Mitch Tuesdays with Mitch: Even at this age, 'and a baby makes three' changes everything Tuesdays with Mitch: Even at this age, 'and a baby makes three' changes everything Tuesdays with Mitch AugMitch Albom