Happy Second Birthday Martha!!!!!!

This is a true miracle story about this little sweet Martha. Martha’s mother was still a teenager when she became pregnant. The father was a married man, with a family… The mother was only 15 years old and Martha was born premature, and very small and malnourished. The mother and Martha were more than 5 months in the feedings centre in Soroti Hospital. As Amecet, we visit the feeding centre every week with some feeding supplements and some encouragement. We brought some clothes and blankets to Martha, but every time we came, we saw the baby laying on the bed (without the clothes) and the mother was elsewhere. 

When Martha was 6,5 months old, the social worker of the hospital called us to come and rescue the baby. He felt the mother was giving up and he feared that Martha may be in danger. Talks started between Amecet and the family of Martha and her mother and the result was that Martha came in Amecet on 13/2/2017, when she was 6,5 month old and her weight was only 2.9 kg….

Our Social workers had visited the family in the village, talking with the mother and the grandparents and Amecet  offered the mother to go back to the primary school to finish P7. She did and Amecet paid her school fees. This was also done for the future of Martha, so that the family would be able to take her back in the future and care for her.

It went very different…  We noticed that Martha couldn’t swallow, so  she didn’t get much milk in her stomach, we started to feed her by NG tube. We also saw that her muscle tone was not there, she was so floppy and with one year, she couldn’t lift her head or turn around. We were worried about her. We tried to seek answers, went to different doctors,  and were referred to a specialist in Kampala. After investigations and tests the diagnosis came: Trisomy 9, a rare chromosomal disorder. We looked everywhere for information and it all confirmed what we saw in Martha. It is only not so severe in Martha. This had a effect on her family, the grandparents are  not  able to care for Martha, the grandmother gave birth to a new baby not long ago. The mother comes to see Martha sometimes, but she went to secondary school and is also not able to care for Martha, because of the condition she is in. Martha is 2 years old and her weight is 6.4 kg. She looks healthy, but very small. We still feed her by NG tube, so we can’t  give her a lot of food. It is still liquid food and you can not get all those special liquid foods here. 

But everybody loves her!!! 

 And we see so many small developments: Martha recognizes people and when you talk to her, she stretches her hand to you until you take her hand and greet her. She can smile and giggle, she can pick toys up to play with. We do see  change, she can hold her head more up and she makes noises, like if she wants to talk.

She has a way to communicate and she can roll all over the place. We think she could start crawling if she had the right help and maybe more…… But that right help is not here in Amecet and not in Soroti.. We had hope that she could go to a special home in Kampala, but that also seems not to be possible. She can’t go back home, the way to feed her is too complicated for the family and there would be nothing to stimulate her, she can’t stay in Amecet, we are limited in what we can do for her……

We feel Martha has a right for the best help she can get, so we want to do a call for help to everyone who reads this. We haven’t done this before, but  feel there must be someone out there who would be able to help Martha. To give her the love, the feeding and the special care she needs!!!! We feel there is much more inside this little girl then we see now, that she is capable to do more than she does now.

Please share this blog, if you feel touched, maybe you can be the one to help Martha………

We pray for many more happy birthdays for Martha!!!!!

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