On Friday, I went to a nearby village to check up on a newborn baby boy who was only 2 days old. Melanie and Lloyd are now involved with helping children with cleft palates. After a 30 minute drive through very curving moutains we finally arrived at the family´s house.
To our surprise baby Diego´s cleft palate was much worse then what we had expected to find but also the love that was being poured out onto him was even more surprising. Like in many other parts of the world, fathers here tend to be hands off, if they are even around at all. But not Diego´s dad. Diego´s dad was feeding him as we walked up and continued to feed, burp and cuddle him until it was time for him to go back to work. Men as attentive as this father are hard to find!
Please pray for Diego! He is only 2 days old and already has a little cold, which in Western society might not be bad, but here it´s not good. When he was born, his family thought that his cleft palate was a bad omen. I talked to the mom about a friend of mine that had a cleft palate and didn´t have surgery to fix it until she was around 18 years old. The mom was stunned that my friend had waited so long for the surgery and was able to go to school and function completely normally all those years with it.
As you will see in the picture, Diego seems to be a healthy weight and size for a newborn.
