The Shanghai Children's Medical Center affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University on Dongfang Road is home to families of children who come to see the sick from all over the country every day. There is a three-story small white building in the hospital area, with yellow, blue and pink windows on the white façade, which is particularly conspicuous among the many tall hospital buildings.
This patient orphan medical care center, named "Aiyou Newborn Baby Home" (hereinafter referred to as "Baby Home"), is the Shanghai hub of aiyou Charity Foundation, with the support of Shanghai Children's Medical Center, as the Shanghai hub of "Aiyou Xinsheng", the medical care project for patient orphans, which specially receives seriously ill orphans sent to Shanghai for treatment from children's welfare homes across the country to provide them with preoperative and postoperative medical care.
Most of these children were abandoned by their parents because they had severe congenital illness. The "Baby House" is like a Noah's Ark, where they found "Mother" and ushered in the hope of life.
Located in the "Baby Home" of Shanghai Children's Medical Center.
White-collar mothers "start from scratch"
On the afternoon of February 11, four "mothers" accompanied the children to play on the carpet of the multi-purpose room on the second floor of the "Baby House". The winter rain poured down outside the house, and the house was filled with the laughter of the children, which made people feel warm.
At present, there are 9 children in the "Baby Home", who suffer from biliary atresia, hypospadias, Down syndrome, varus, double hip deformity, macrototogesis, complex congenital heart disease and other diseases. Some children suffer from multiple diseases, and the medical institutions in their localities cannot treat these major diseases and incurable diseases, so local welfare homes send them to Shanghai for treatment.
From receiving the child's information, to arranging hospital beds and doctors, to undergoing surgery to postoperative care, children often need to go through a period of preoperative and postoperative maintenance in the "Baby Home" and then be picked up by the local welfare home. Many children suffer from a series of congenital diseases, undergo multiple surgeries, and undergo a painful recovery process after surgery. "Nursing mothers" take good care of them day and night, accompanying them through the weakest postoperative danger period.
1-year-old Binbin had just undergone reconstruction, and during his recovery, he had to use an dilator to prevent the wounds from growing together. The cold dilator was put into the flesh, spreading out little by little, and the doctor said that this pain was unbearable for adults. At the end of each treatment, the child was soaking wet with pain, as if he had been fished out of water. "One volunteer drew a cartoon for Binbin, in which Binbin incarnated as Ultraman and repelled the 'Rotten Ass Monster.'" Later, every time he did the treatment, Binbin said that he was Ultraman and was going to start "fighting monsters".
"Baby Home" was originally founded by several white-collar mothers in Shanghai, and Zhang Min, director of the "Baby Home" Patient Child Care Center, is one of them. "At that time, I was still working in a foreign company, and after connecting with the families of children who came to Shanghai from other places through online posts, I used the time off work or lunch break to take these children's families to the hospital to see a doctor, help them raise funds, and follow up their treatment."
Among these children, they found that many were orphans. "These children are not cared for by their parents, the welfare home is not in a position to allow them to undergo postoperative rehabilitation, and many children are sent back after the operation in a hurry and cannot recover for a long time." These children need help even more. Thus, there was the earliest "baby home".
"The mothers were not professional social workers, but they used their spare time to rent a small house in Pudong and ask some nursing staff and aunts to take care of orphans who came to Shanghai to see a doctor." Zhang Min said that more and more children came to the "Baby Home" from all over the country.
Since 2011, "Baby Home" has become the first care center of the Aiyou Charity Foundation "Aiyou Xinsheng" - the medical care project for patient orphans, and officially landed in Shanghai Children's Medical Center the following year, from a "grassroots organization" to a public welfare charity project with professional qualifications, and the scale of patient orphans served has also begun to radiate throughout the country through the "Aiyou Xinsheng" project, and established clear rules and regulations to recruit full-time managers, nurses and nurses.
At present, there are 13 "Aiyou Xinsheng" orphan care centers in the country, most of which are located in welfare homes in provincial capitals, while Shanghai's "Aiyou Xinsheng Baby Home" is like a core transit station, receiving seriously ill orphans from all over the world who need to receive higher level of treatment to Shanghai for treatment and maintenance.
Accompany your child through the postoperative danger period
In May last year, aiyou xinsheng "Baby Home" was inaugurated at the new site of Shanghai Children's Medical Center. The new little white building has three floors, and the baby's bedroom is located on the second floor, with a separate bathroom, bathroom and milk pantry. On the first floor is a washing room and a cooking room, as well as a nursing staff dormitory and a rest area. There are 24-hour shifts to take care of the children, often getting up in the middle of the night to cook, and they have to live here.
"Moms" do six "one off" a week, and there is almost no rest when they are busy. Every morning at 6:30 a.m., the "mother" who went to the morning shift would go up to replace the "mother" who was on duty the night before, and there was only two hours of lunch and dinner break in a day.
There are 11 nursing mothers in the "Baby Home", and on average, one "mother" has to take care of 2 children. The head nurse and professional medical team of Shanghai Children's Medical Center Heart Center come every week to give training classes and exams to "mothers". Each child's treatment, nursing measures, meals and medicines must be formed into one person and one file, and no mistakes can be made.
Li Qiying has been coming to the "Baby Home" for 12 years, following the project from the original "self-made" in a rental house. "At that time, there were only 3 aunts, taking care of 8 children, one aunt was responsible for cleaning, one was cooking, and I was responsible for feeding and bathing." She remembers the first night they had to take care of a child with a severe congenital heart. "The baby's face is very bad, the other aunts are a little scared, I am more courageous, I said I come." I myself love children, I think these children are very pitiful, and I have been doing it now. ”
Li Qiying was doing a clapping game with the children.
Before coming to Shanghai, Li Qiying was a housewife in Chongqing. "After my own children went to university in Hefei, I went to my sister's house in Shanghai and entered the 'Baby Home' by chance." She is very serious about taking care of the children, although the level of education is not high, but after professional training gradually get started, many children with multiple malformations, hydrocephalus, heart disease and other difficult nursing difficulties are often handed over to her. "For children with heart disease, you can't feed too much water; for children with hydrocephalus, breastfeeding should pay special attention to the posture of the head... I have developed my own nursing experience in training and with my children over time. ”
Obviously, he was a little boy with long eyelashes, he was only two months old when he came, and he had had no basket surgery in other places, but he was seriously infected and needed a second repair, and the local hospital could not accept it. "Baby Home" coordinated with all its efforts and finally helped him complete the repair surgery in Shanghai. Due to the poor physical condition of the previous infection, coupled with his congenital heart disease, the doctor also said that he was not optimistic about whether the child could grow up.
The child was handed over to Li Qiying to take care of. "I remember the first time I saw him, he smiled at me and held out two hands for me to hold." Obviously it is very difficult to breathe, 24 hours to inhale oxygen, once you leave the oxygen cylinder will be purple, breathless. Li's mother held him almost all day, massaging his hands and forehead.
"The most difficult thing is that when changing the fistula, the intestines often come out. The child was in great pain, and anyone who watched the scene would be afraid. Later, I thought of my own way, and made a small ball out of space cotton, which was flat on one side and oval on the other, tied to the fistula bag. This method worked, and later other "mothers" used this method.
Three months later, Ming Ming underwent congenital heart surgery. "The child was only 18 months old when he recovered, couldn't walk, couldn't speak, but he recognized me. He was like an elf, picking him up and singing a song to him, and his little hands would move along. ”
Sending the child away for half a year can not be slowed down
Koizumi is the first child in Li Qiying's belt, and he was only 9 months old when he first took over, suffering from severe hydronephrosis and macrocolon, and had just finished surgery. "At that time, the child was full of tubes, and it was so painful that it was difficult to sleep, and he would unconsciously grab the tube with his hands." That night, Mother Li had been guarding Koizumi by the bedside, not letting him grasp the tube. Near dawn, the child finally fell asleep, and Mother Li went to sleep exhausted.
The next morning, the child woke up first, saw that "Mother" was asleep next to her, moved to the edge of the bed little by little, and pulled Li's mother's coat with her small hand and covered her. The other paramedics saw this and were touched.
"Koizumi suffers from hydronephrosis and can't drink more water, but the giant colon needs to drink water, otherwise the stool can't be pulled out, so the water should be fed very accurately." For the sake of this child, Mother Li her heart.
"He's clingy at times and just likes me to bring it. Feed him fruit, and he has to ask me to eat a slice of it, and he eats it himself. Sometimes I also know how to hurt people, and when I see that I can't take care of a few children alone, I take the initiative to help me throw away the garbage, move the stool, and take the disinfectant lamp, when he just turned 1. ”
The baby practices walking step by step with the help of the nursing mother.
Every child entering the "Baby Home" will not leave until the end of treatment in Shanghai, while children with serious diseases who need repeated treatment will stay for a long time, which is the case of Koizumi. "It had been 21 months since Koizumi had left, when he had been cured of his illness, was a normal and healthy child, and was fortunate to find a family that adopted him."
On that day, Li Qiying personally sent the child to the Civil Affairs Bureau and handed it over to his adoptive parents. "The child cried for hours, I didn't cry at the time, and as soon as the child left, the tears couldn't stop." For most of the year after Koizumi left, she felt that her heart was empty and could not be relieved, and until now that she thinks back, she still feels uncomfortable. Later, due to the fear that the relationship between the nursing mother and the child was too deep, the "Baby Home" adopted a rotational approach, allowing the "mothers" to take turns to take care of different children.
After the child recovers and returns to the local welfare home, sometimes the welfare home will send photos to inform the nursing mothers of the recent situation of the children, but some children have never seen them again.
"Whenever I see my child smiling happily and calling out to my mother, I am still very relieved." Last year, Shanghai's "Baby Home" rescued 35 children, and Li Qiying's children have accumulated more than 100.
"It's actually the child who heals us"
The walls of the bedroom are light blue, painted with white clouds and airplanes, and small white beds on the wooden floors, warm and fresh. There are 3 children living in a room, the older ones will take the initiative to take care of the younger ones, and some children have inferiority when they first come in, and become cheerful after living with their peers. "There was a little brother who was bedridden when he first came, and four or five younger brothers and sisters went to his brother's bedside every day to talk to him, and slowly, the little brother's condition improved."
"These kids are healing us." Liu Xiaoxi, project manager of Aiyou Xinsheng, said, "They have endured painful surgery and postoperative treatment, but after each treatment, they will endure the pain to give us a sunny smile." They are very young, but they know how to care about others. They never ask Mom and Dad, because they know in their hearts that they don't have Mom and Dad..." These sensible and heart-wrenching children are like little angels, giving her sunshine and strength.
"Many volunteers have just heard that they are orphans of patients and feel very burdened in their hearts, but when they come here, they find that this is a very warm place." Liu Xiaoxi said that in the "Baby Home", volunteers and children actually help each other, "these children will give you a lot of positive energy, let you become a very soft person." ”
One of the children was held in Zhang Min's arms.
"The 'Baby Home' was founded because I couldn't let go of these poor children, and if I didn't help them, I wouldn't be able to get through the obstacles in my heart." Zhang Min still remembers that when she first established "Baby Home", her child was only 3 years old, and now the child is 17 years old. She extended her love for her children to many children. In the past 10 years, 1636 orphans have been cured of their illness and regained their lives at the Aiyou Newborn Baby Home.
"I feel like I have a relationship with these children, and even if I'm tired, I can stick to it." Li Said that now that her own children have grown up and worked, sometimes they are busy, and she only goes back to her hometown once every two years for the New Year. Compared to her own children, she put more energy into these orphans. "These children were abandoned by their parents and are seriously ill, which is very distressing." The salary of a nurse in the "Baby Home" is not high, and there are often family members of the hospital who introduce Li Qiying to the job of nanny. "I said I'm not going out, I'm going to keep doing it here because I've long thought of these kids as my own family."