Amari Hope

"I don't want to use this," Bani, the orphanage's nurse-in-training, said as she leaned over our tiny baby Amari.

A week and a half earlier, Elise and I would never have imagined that we’d be here, sitting in this concrete room, labeled as a doctor's office.

On the 24th of September, Mrs. Waid had mentioned the possibility of going to one of the villages to pick up a new baby. With the orphanage already near its capacity, we assumed that it wouldn't be possible. The next day, our sleepy morning stupor was abruptly shaken by pounding on our door. The pastor and Mr. Waid stood there.

"They're leaving to get the baby in 5 minutes! So get ready and meet at the gate!"

We threw our clothes on, ran outside, said a prayer together, and hopped in the truck for the two hour drive to the village.

When we arrived, we were ushered into a courtyard surrounded by mud huts. The sound of deep mourning met our ears as we saw the family and friends of the deceased mother on the ground, bodies shaking with uncontrollable sobs. We were in total shock as the sorrow began to well up inside of us. It was then that we saw the auntie and father appear. The auntie was holding a tiny bundle and as we peeked inside, we realized that this was the baby. Elise and I looked into the eyes of the father and aunt and saw so much pain and sadness. We looked back down at the baby and both began to weep. Mrs. Waid took the little one in her arms.

"I don't know if she's even going to make it home girls. She needs to eat!"

The three of us worked as quickly as possible, pulling out a bottle of formula to heat, putting on new clothes and a diaper, and swaddling our tiny bundle in a clean blanket. Then we held her. Tears were flowing freely, much like the prayers our hearts were crying out to God to save this little one's life.

After the necessary papers were signed, we gathered up our things to leave. As we walked out of the courtyard, the women who were mourning approached me and began pleading with me in Bangla through their tears. I didn't understand anything they were saying but my heart broke for them and I began to sob again. All we could do was stand there and hold each other while we cried. Elise had continued down the path, carrying the baby back to the truck. As she was walking, another one of the baby's aunts came up and clung to her. After a few moments she pressed her face against the little one's cheek and took her into her arms for one last time as she wept. Mrs. Waid's prompting urged Elise to pull the baby back into her own arms, and as she did, all the villagers began to place money into her arms, on top of the baby. I didn't know how I could just leave these women here alone and I didn't know enough Bangla to give them any condolences. So I said the only Bangla words I knew, "Ami tomakay valovashi," [I love you] and tried to leave them. Instead the auntie clung to me as I walked back down the road. She held onto my hand, through the window, until the truck pulled away from the village.

There we sat. Elise was holding the baby and we were gawking in shock over the events that had just transpired. A storm began to roll in. The thin trees that lined the dirt road began to sway violently and thunder rumbled in the distance. Soon the rain came. This was the first rain we had seen in Bangladesh and it seemed fitting. As we drove along, we attempted to get the baby to drink, but in two hours, we could barely force 5 ml into her tiny body.

"I'll give you girls the privilege of naming her," Mrs. Waid said as she looked back at Elise and I.

But we were all worried. Besides an occasional worrisome sneeze and face scrunch, our baby wasn't very responsive. Elise and I were constantly checking to make sure she was still breathing. Her right eye was infected and kept leaking a yellow mucus that we continually cleaned off. But she was absolutely beautiful. We had already fallen in love.

When we arrived back at the orphanage compound, Mrs. Waid realized that she didn't know which caregiver to give the baby to. We immediately volunteered. She had already completely stolen our hearts and we knew she needed extra special care. We named her Amari Hope. Amari means everlastingly strong and lovely. We prayed constantly that she would be able to live up to all the hope that her name held.

In the first week she weighed approximately 2 pounds. After another week, 3.6 pounds and the Waids regained hope that our little one might actually make it. She was getting stronger every day, but we noticed that her sneeze was getting worse and sometimes she struggled to breath during feedings. So we talked to the Waids and decided we would take her to the doctor the next morning.

That's what brought us here. Bani was holding a thermometer that had just been pulled out of the armpit of a sick, elderly, Bengali woman whose cleanliness left a lot to be desired. Without any sanitization, the doctor passed the same thermometer to Bani and instructed her to take the baby's temperature. Elise, Bani, and I sat in shock.

"Can we have an antiseptic?" Bani finally asked.

The doctor looked at us and laughed, "In your country cleanliness is very important. In our country, our people our poor, so our patients are poor, so cleanliness is not so important."

He had intended for this statement to be humorous, but as his words sank in, Elise and I glanced at each other with wide eyes. We realized that he had nearly summed up the reason that poverty continues to plague our world. Because the people are poor, their whole quality of life is poor. Poor cleanliness, poor eating, poor living conditions…the list goes on. But instead of trying to change that, they settle for poor. I was shocked, saddened, and enraged all at once. Then I looked back at Bani who had finished cleaning the thermometer and was walking back to the baby, and realized that she knew differently, and that meant there was hope.

We left the doctor's office with four new prescriptions and the advice to take Amari to the hospital right away. While we were gone, a decision had been made, back at the orphanage, that Amari would be moved to the clinic on campus where one of the Bengali ladies would take over 24/7 care for her. We had known that this would happen eventually, but neither Elise nor I were prepared to give her up already. In addition, the doctor had diagnosed her with a chest infection. Since we had just seen the comparatively low quality of care at the doctor's office, and Amari now had five different medications (the fifth was medicine for a thrush infection in her mouth), we were hesitant to leave her.

There was a hospital in Bogra, about a 3 hour drive from Bangla Hope, and we had been told that it was relatively clean. After a few calls, we found out that the pediatric unit was equipped with an incubator and we decided to make the drive to scout out the facilities ourselves. The pastor, Mrs. Waid, Bani, the new care giver, Elise, and I all piled into the van again.

Elise and I had been told that the hospitals here were bad, but nothing could have prepared us for what met our eyes when we arrived. The exterior was deceivingly decent, but quickly gave way to the dingy interior. The smell was atrocious. Despite the hallways being open to the outside (no windows), they were filled with garbage, sheep, a cat, and people. The hospital cots that lined the rooms were rusty and the mattresses were stained various shades of brown. When we finally reached the pediatric wing, things were even worse. The rooms were far beyond their maximum capacity. Cots were shared between a sick child and its mother. Sometimes two children and their caregiver were all together on the same cot. Beds had been brought into the hallway as overflow, and when those filled up, people laid on the floor. Sick children were everywhere! Quarantine was obviously not an option here. The strangest thing was the lack of doctors and nurses, which we didn't see until we walked into the infant room, where the incubator was being kept.

"Are these the incubators?" Mrs. Waid asked, indicating the ancient looking equipment lining one side of the room.

"Yes, but these no work long time," one of the nurses said in broken English.

We all turned and looked at each other, thinking the same thing, “Of course they don't work. You just told us that you had incubators. We never asked whether or not they worked.” We were then called into a doctor's office where Amari was examined again. Again we were told that it was extremely important for the baby to stay at the hospital for a few days and be given medicine and food intravenously, as the formula was creating more mucus in her chest. None of us had any desire to leave her in a place like this, but we realized it might be the best option for the time being. So we left Amari at the hospital with Bani and her new caregiver.

The next morning, back at the orphanage, Elise and I sat on pins and needles waiting for word on the situation at the hospital. Finally, in the late afternoon we heard from Bani. Their night had gone from bad to worse. Amari had been moved into another room to share a dirty bed with three other sick babies. Bani begged for someone to come and pick them all up. It wasn't until they got back, that we found out that 14 babies had died in that same hospital room in just two days, some of them in the bed next to our baby. Amari was returned to her room in the clinic with her new caregiver. We were so thankful that our beautiful baby had made it, despite the circumstances, and was even showing improvement.

Amari is now just over a month old and weighs 4.4 pounds. We are ecstatic with the progress that she has made and are so happy that she is in good hands. Her caregiver has a sweet, loving, joyful spirit and is fully devoted to taking care of our little one. Elise and I go and visit them both often and love pausing for a moment before we leave, after returning Amari into her arms, to watch her gush over the baby. We never imagined that we would take care of such a fragile little life and are so very thankful for all the support and prayers we received from home. She is a perfect little miracle that has forever become a part of our hearts.

-Cassie

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Within moments, our little fourth-floor apartment transformed. The bedroom became an incubator and the living space, a nursery. As our simple home filled with seemingly endless baby supplies, Cassie and I knew it was more than the apartment that was experiencing immense change. Most individuals have the opportunity to prepare for their first child. Expecting parents read books, study articles, often take classes and continually stress for nine months about the baby on the way. Our experience was quite the contrary. The old wives tale of the stork, who unexpectedly drops babies off at doorsteps, is closer to our encounter. 

Flash back 3 months prior to this time. Cassie and I were asleep, in my room, in Walla Walla, WA when we were rudely awakened from our serendipitous rest by a crying kitten which was in a box at the foot of the bed. Earlier that day, we had gone to Hastings to drop off a movie and somehow returned home with a small, black ball of fur. Cassie had heard about some free kittens in the area and her heart was set on having one. We were both feeling adventurous and extra impulsive that day, so hey, why not just get one? Waking up in the middle of the night for a crying fluff ball was not quite what we had envisioned.

Now, back to Wednesday, September 25. The completely heart-wrenching experience of picking up an infant from a desolate, Bengali village, left me feeling overwhelmed. The precious baby girl had stolen our hearts from the first moment we placed our eyes on her. Nothing in my life could have prepared me for the emotion that overtook me when I held the baby for the first time. Looking down at the smallest infant I had ever seen, my heart began to ache, my throat became tight, and my eyes welled with tears. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do everything humanly possible to help the tiny life I held in my arms. I am still at a loss for words to properly describe the emotions that enveloped me. Gazing at the tiny baby, who Cassie and I later named Amari, I knew my purpose in coming to Bangladesh had taken on a whole new meaning. Mrs. Waid told Cassie and I that we could go ahead and care for the baby ourselves until she could find another caretaker. She told us we would have to get up all through the night to feed the baby, and both of us recalled our experience with the kitten. We told her that since we had adopted a baby kitten, a crying baby would be somewhat similar. Obviously, that was wishful thinking. We knew this would be much different, but we were trying to be light-hearted because the emotionally exhausting events of picking up the baby were still weighing heavily on all of us. Still in a daze, we were both excited and scared for the task at hand. Cassie and I were now the caretakers for a mere 2 lb infant.

The responsibilities of mothering began immediately and were continuous. The first afternoon Cassie and I hovered over Amari and inspected and questioned everything about her. As American millennials we turned to Google for help, frantically typing things into the search bar: "gooey dark green baby poop", "how long should you burp a newborn", "how to give a newborn their first sponge bath", "cleaning afterbirth slime out of a newborns hair", etc. Not only were we complete newbies at caring for a preemie, everything in Bangladesh is a bit more complicated. Here we have had the inexpressible joy of using cloth diapers, which made changing time even more eventful than usual. Henceforth, we have gained a new appreciation for disposable diapers. Also, since we don't have a stove or microwave, the scorching water from the faucet was used to heat the baby's bottle. Cassie and I would fill a small plastic bucket and hold the milk bottle in the hot water until it became warm. Feeding the precious baby was the biggest task. She was seemingly lifeless and we spent hours trying to drip formula into her itty-bitty mouth. Cassie and I both knew that we had to spend as long as it took because if our precious girl didn't eat she likely wouldn't survive. The first night Cassie and I climbed into our beds, I was taunted and teased by the idea of sleep, but was paranoid at the remembrance of the infant sleeping nearby. Cassie and I had set alarms for every two hours throughout the night. We planned to take turns awakening from sweet slumber to feed and change our little baby.

Unfortunately Cassie became sick the following morning which meant I was the sole provider for our baby because Cassie didn't want to risk spreading her illness. Despite her sickness, Cassie continued to help in every way possible and was my rock and moral support for the four days that followed. Caring for Amari was tiring, but yet the most wonderful experience. Days were long and turned into sleepless nights. Exhaustion was becoming uncomfortably familiar, but each time I was awakened from my brief increments of sleep at night, I was immediately filled with more love for baby Amari each time I reached into her crib to pick her up. As I would hold her in my arms and look down I knew that nursing this child's life was worth waking at such unearthly hours. While Cassie was ill, she would often wake up throughout the night and ask me in somnambulistic talk how the baby and I were doing. Her sleepy chatter always kept me entertained for often her cold medicine did more of the talking.

Cassie and I learned so much from caring for Amari including a small glimpse of motherhood. The difficulty was that, whether we wanted to admit to it or not, Amari was not ours. Therefore, all the women around the orphanage were quite open with their suggestions and sometimes disapproving mumbles and looks. Cassie and I learned quickly that different cultures care for infants in very different ways. I knew that we were doing our best for the baby, whether the other women thought so or not. Cassie and I were pouring our heart and soul into the care of Amari. Many of the women were very supportive and sweet and wanted to help Cassie and I in any way they could. Some cooked us meals; others offered words of encouragement in broken English.

The following week school resumed. The week Amari came to us, the children had been on break. This meant that not only did we have Amari, but we both needed to return to teaching. By this time Cassie was thankfully feeling better and we came up with a system. Cassie would go to her class and teach in the morning while I stayed with Amari. In the afternoon I would go and teach class while Cassie cared for Amari. Then, at night, we split shifts. Often we had sleepy conversations at some unfortunately late hours. Groggily, we would mumble to each other, inquiring about the status of Amari.

As time progressed, we both became incredibly attached to our precious baby and could not imagine giving her to another caretaker, but unfortunately we knew the day was coming. The second week with Amari ended in a series of exhausting, frustrating, and conflicting events. With a visit to the doctor, and orders to take Amari to the hospital, Cassie and I were left feeling discouraged, worried and slightly beat down. Giving up care of Amari was even more difficult than I ever expected. The difficulty partially came because everything happened quickly and unexpectedly. Cassie and I had often discussed the tormenting thought of turning over care of our baby to another person. Although we would have loved to keep her for the duration of our stay, we knew she was already becoming quite attached to us and leaving her after six months would be unhealthy. Despite all this, she will always hold a very special place in our hearts. That being said, Amari is now being cared for by one of the Bengali women here at Bangla Hope. They have their own little room above the medical clinic at the orphanage. The caretaker is doing a wonderful job, and I can tell she loves Amari like her own. Cassie and I visit our sweet baby as often as we can. Amari will forever hold an extremely special place in our hearts. Cassie and I will always love her like our own. I believe God led us to Bangladesh for a reason and Amari was quite certainly in His plan.

-Elise