Plumpin' Up Some Babies!

Due to the recent famine in Ethiopia, our agency's baby orphanage (The Wanna House) was flooded with over 70 babies at the beginning of the year! Many of these babies were coming into care very malnourished, underweight, and sick. We have mentioned several times the desperate situation going on and had the joy of sending supplies, as well as seeing some of our dear friends who aren't even adopting, sending supplies too! What an encouragement!

And now, a GREAT addition to the baby care at the orphanage... something called "Plumpy Nut." Many babies in developing countries are dying due to the lack of milk, vitamins, and nutrients their little bodies need. Reporter Anderson Cooper says

Mothers in these villages can't produce enough milk themselves and can't afford to buy it. Even if they could, they can't store it -- there’s no electricity, so no refrigeration. Powdered milk is useless because most villagers don't have clean water. Plumpynut was designed to overcome all these obstacles.

Babies in other countries don't have peanut allergy issues as we do here for some reason. At first, that was a concern among many adoptive parents, but we quickly found out a peanut allergy is very rare in the developing world. You've gotta check out this video. It's amazing! We are so thankful our agency is able to provide plumpy nut for the babies in care. They have seen remarkable improvements in many of the babies and toddlers. There are some babies who are even difficult to recognize now after filling out from the good nutrition! They look totally different! It brings tears to my eyes!

(I stole this title from a bloggin' friend).