Two hungry babies

Here are baby boy and baby girl with their mother
(who really didn’t want to look at the camera).

I heard yesterday about two newborns out in a nearby village who were starving and could I do something for them? So after a night of nightmares about gavage feeding starving babies I headed out to see them this morning. I’m happy to report that it was not as bad as I feared. 

Mother trying with the syringe and grandmother on the left supervising. 

Dad holding one and an older sibling on the right.

All sitting outside their home. 

They have not yet been named as their father was sure they were going to die. Their mother, as they say , has produced 6 times. And she says she has never had any milk. Two other babies died before they were 3 months old because of lack of milk. Three others survived but were sickly and malnourished. Then these twins came. Their father says last time he couldn’t buy enough cow’s milk for one child and now he needs to get for two babies!  So these two little ones, at 3 weeks old, have been surviving on one shared cup of milk a day. I’m estimating that the little girl weighs around 2 kg and the little boy 2.5 kg. But they are strong! I put a syringe of 10ccs of formula in the little girl’s mouth and she sucked the plunger to the bottom. She took about 60 cc without hesitation. The little boy struggled a little more but after watching me I wanted the mother to feed him and she struggled with the syringe so he got quite a bit more air.

I spent about an hour there, talking to them about how to mix formula, the need to boil and cool the water first, about feeding them nearly every two hours. Bottles here are completely unrealistic so she feeds them with a cup but they do surprisingly well. I did leave the syringe with them because it was easier to feed such tiny little babies with that but I encouraged her to switch back to the cup within the month.

'

The little girl on my "exam table" (back seat of my car). She is smaller than my medical bag and it probably weighs 4 times what she does.  

I felt at ease upon leaving. This mother is motivated and wants what is best. She now has the resources and I’ll be back soon to check in on them. Thank you once again to everyone who donated formula. It is making a difference to these two!