ooo i forgot to mention!

So on Friday I forgot to talk about the hospital. I had a very special day in the hospital Friday. Megan and I first went to visit the mom upstairs in the same room as the gypsie baby. We brought her 3 fresh covrigi (pretzels) because we did not know if we would see her again and wanted to give her a little get better soon, we were thinking about you gift. Megan stayed up there for a bit but I went downstairs to visit Elena. As a note, I am not allowed to post any pictures of orphaned children on my blog, so any pictures that I do post, are children who have been left in the hospital but do in fact have a mother. Social services have not yet intervened so the child is not yet an "orphan". This is why I do not have a picture of Elena to post. On the same floor, however, is a baby named Adelina whose mother just dropped her off at the hospital but has not visited her since. She was in a little crib hooked up to all sorts of machinery. There was a breathing machine that basically was breathing for her as well as little patches for a heart monitor. I was just going to leave a couple diapers and go visit Elena in the next room over, but I had a feeling that I should stay with her. She was all tucked into a blanket, so I pulled her little hand out and started to rub her little fingers. The crib was just low enough that I had to stoop a bit to reach her well. There was not a chair either, so I felt a little awkward stooping there while the other young mother in the room walked over to us and just stared. Adelina smelled so pungent.. she smelled like the inside of a cast. I do not think she had been washed in weeks.. maybe even months because of the respirator and heart monitor. Just rubbing her hand caused tons of dead skin to just fall off. It broke my heart. I got a baby wipe and wiped her down but the smell was still overwhelming. I spent about an hour in that room just holding Adelina's hand, humming and singing to her until she fell asleep. THe other mother, Dana, kept referring to me as domna or domnisoara (mrs. or ms. ) and spoke in the formal tone to me, so I assume she was very very young. She looked 16 or so and her daughter, Ana Maria was in really bad shape. Similar to Adelina, Ana Maria was hooked up to a couple different machines and it looked like she had 2 different IV's as well. The mother had placed little cards with the Orthadox Saints' pictures around her daughter's pillow and would fix their positioning the moment one slipped. I wonder what the significance of these cards are because I see them all over the place, particularly in the hospital. This one hour though, was just so touching for me because even though Adelina could not acknowledge my presence, I felt like she could feel me there. Her hand was too weak to really grasp mine, but I know that she could feel my hand holding hers. My heart goes out to those, like Dana, who have family members like Adelina or Ana Maria. Whose family members are so ill that they do not acknowledge visitors and yet.. the visitors still come. Dana still holds her daughter's hand and still stays by her side because of the immense love she has for her daughter. Adelina does not have anyone to stay by her side, but I hope in that brief hour, she was able to feel of my love for her.