Adoption in the News
Thousands offer to adopt Syrian newborn girl pulled from the earthquake rubble Staff and Wire report
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/02/10/syrian-baby-born-earthquake-adoption/11227621002/
Thousands have offered to adopt a newborn girl whose mother gave birth under the rubble of a five-story collapsed apartment building in Syria following Monday’s earthquake.
Baby Aya — meaning miracle in Arabic — was found buried under concrete more than 10 hours after the quake struck with her umbilical cord still connected to her deceased mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya. Her father and all four of her siblings also died after the devastating earthquake hit the northwest Syrian town of Jindayris, next to the Turkish border.
After a female neighbor cut Aya’s cord, she was rushed to a nearby children’s hospital and placed in an incubator. The physician treating the baby, Dr. Hani Maarouf at Cihan Hospital in Afrin, said Aya’s condition is improving by the day and there was no damage to her spine, as initially feared.
Footage of a man sprinting from the collapsed debris of a building, holding Aya covered in dust, went viral on social media. Maarouf said the baby’s lowered body temperature indicated she had been born about three hours before being found.
Since Aya’s rescue, hospital manager Khalid Attiah says he’s fielded dozens of calls from people worldwide wanting to adopt baby Aya. Additionally, thousands of people are asking for adoption details on social media.
For now, Attiah’s wife, who has a daughter just four months older than her, will breastfeed Aya alongside their own child.
Author: Gail Vincent
It pissed me off that the prevailing attitude toward adoption issues was "Well, it's in the blood". This irritation has led me to an interest in imparting what I am learning from the study of Nature and Nurture: its competition and teamwork as it applies to adoption.
Granted, I am a 2/3rdser, physically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, spiritually. I never quite fully get where I am expected to go or personally choose to go. It is evident in this blog set up to examine such a life.
Still, hopefully, a bit of self-awareness energizes the need to keep seeking for I want to understand our family's story. It is an adaptation of James Michener's, Go after your dreams [and nightmares] to know your dreams [and nightmares] for what they are (The Drifters,p.768).
Three things:
1. I am not a researcher but rather a student of others’ ideas and I am old.
2. I was first an evangelical missionary, a career I told the god-I-choose-to-believe-in that I couldn't live with anymore, so got an education and moved on to a career as a high school English teacher. The one skill learned and practiced in both careers was to take an understanding to be imparted – whether of the evangelical mission’s doctrine or the education ministry’s curriculum – and apply reductionist principles necessary to be able to present the teaching to what I understood the given audience needed.
3. I have found a viable reason for dead trees still standing in a forest. They can be hazardous fuel for forest fires, yes, but I have also noticed they are riddled with holes made by birds wanting to harvest the bugs within or they become the ground from which young trees can sprout. It put me in mind of the myth of the old man who built on ruins in order to see better and farther. Perhaps age has this to offer: we may use the ruins and remains to see farther or gain some sustenance for the journey ahead.
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