update

I know some of you are waiting to hear what the next day brought forth for me at the hospital. It ended up that my friend was able to get back from her trip and go with me so I wasn't alone after all. The second day we had 9 babies. I can't believe how I began to get attached to certain ones after just two days. The situation with the clothes is so desperate. When we first get there, we scavenger around and try to get together a few clean pieces of clothing. The snaps are all rusted and don't close so they wrap gauze around the baby's waist to keep the sleepers on them! Rarely is there a pair of socks that match. Several of the babies end up with just an undershirt and diaper because there are no more clothes. They're all stained with the red dye from the medicine they put on the babies' bottoms. It doesn't help to take clothes in because they all get stolen and the babies never see them. People have tried before. We do have our own little bag of Desitin, eye ointment, lotion and other items that we might need and we hide that. When we give the babies a bath, we hold them in one hand under a running faucet and have to constantly keep our hand under the water and adjust it because the water becomes scalding in a second. So dangerous! It's just really a hopeless situation and we do the best we can but it's so sad to think of what happens to those little guys when we're not there. They drink their bottles as if there's no tomorrow, so ravenously hungry. It seems that even at their young age, they know that if they don't eat when it's offered to them, they may not get anything for a looooong time. We pick each baby up, usually in a deep sleep, and they immediately start sucking like crazy when the bottle hits their lips. You know how hard it is to get a sleeping baby to eat normally! Not with these little cherubs. I'll be back in the hospital next Tuesday and hopefully update you again then. No luck getting pictures.