You Are Going To Have To Read This To Believe It…

Warning: This story talks about a real family's experience with tragedy in part as a result of infant mortality.

Imagine you and your spouse are expecting twins and you are so excited about it!

Imagine giving birth prematurely and your twin girls have to spend time in the NICU(In public hospitals in Honduras, once you give birth, you don't get to stay with your baby if they are admitted to the NICU. Once you are medically cleared, because hospital beds are needed for the next patient, your babies stay in the NICU and you are only allowed to visit them during visitor hours.)

Imagine the hospital staff tells you it's best to go rest at home in your small, up in the mountains, not even showing up on google maps, three hours from the hospital - and that you should be able to return to the hospital in a few weeks when the babies should be cleared to go home with you.

Imagine returning to the hospital, so excited to be able to see your babies and believing that today is the day you get to take them home! But when you arrive at the hospital, a new crew of nurses and administrative staff are working. And when you ask them about your babies, a nurse quickly looks through some files and tells you that there was a complication and they passed away. 

Imagine how heavy the bag of diapers, onesies, and bows that you spent the last few days perfectly packing feels as the news sinks in. 

The overwhelming heartbreak.

The confusion.

The unbearable rush of information regarding protocol for releasing them from the morgue.

The unthinkable cost of coffins and private transportation that will be around four months' salary to give them a proper burial. 

So many papers to sign and not enough money to pay to get them home. 

So you travel home without them, brokenhearted, hope completely shattered.

Imagine FOUR years going by, and an aunt shows up at your home speechless and with a copy of the newspaper in hand.

That newspaper has a picture of a four-year-old girl born on the day you gave birth, with a short description which says she was "abandoned" in the hospital where you gave birth.

The more you read on the more you realize every element of this story matches up perfectly with your story. 

(In Honduras, for kids who have been abandoned, before finalizing the legal abandonment process, posts of the child are made in the newspaper and on local radio for an attempt to find the biological family, if no one reaches out, their case is moved on towards adoption.) 

The picture you see looks so much like you. You think it can't possibly be true, they told you that your babies had died in the hospital. But you have to go and find out for yourself. 

After years of mourning -- you make the effort to dig deeper into this story and find out that she IS your daughter. 

There was confusion in the record-keeping at the hospital and while ONE of your daughters did have a medical complication and did pass away, one was completely healthy. The nurse on duty only read one file and was unaware of the other girl. 

After you left the hospital, another shift of nurses eventually reported the living baby as abandoned because there wasn't a record of you coming back for her. 

Since then, you and your husband have traveled six hours round trip every week to visit your beautiful daughter in the orphanage where she ended up as a result of this confusion.

You file all of the paperwork, talk to everyone who could help, and do everything you can imagine in order to get her back.

We are so excited to share that we were able to visit this family with the welfare office to complete the studies needed to reunite this family to complete the process of their reunification!

The family could be so angry and resentful with the system, and nobody would have any right to blame them, but they are too happy to have their daughter home to even consider resentment today. 

They recognize the flaws and failures that led to their tragedy, but they are choosing to see their story of reunification as a miracle. They are choosing gratitude for the restoration of their family rather than resentment towards the things that first tore them apart.

Thank you for joining us and helping us to reunite the family in this story and so many other families with your support!