Jacob

Jacob came to New Day Foster Home for heart surgery to correct his congenital heart defect. However, when he arrived from the orphanage, he was suffering from malnutrition due to the simple fact that his orphanage could not afford formula. Instead they were feeding their babies cow' s milk.

Malnutrition made Jacob very susceptible to sickness, and he caught pneumonia and an infection which spread to his already-weakened heart, causing it to enlarge and beat irregularly. Shortly after his arrival at New Day Foster Home, we admitted him into ICU at a Beijing hospital, where he stayed until he recovered from pneumonia and began treatments to bring his enlarged heart back down to its normal size.

Jacob' s story ends happily, but we know that proper nutrition in this case would have saved Jacob a fight for his life. Jacob' s story is what started the New Day Formula Project.

Shu Shu

When Shu Shu entered our formula project at 2 months old, he was extremely malnourished. A doctor accompanying us on the trip told us that without intervention, Shu Shu would shortly die of malnourishment.

We hoped it wasn' t too late for him, and over the next few months, we were thrilled to see a huge improvement in his health! When he entered the project, he weighed 3 kg and was 50 cm long at 2 months old. After being in the formula project 6 months, he weighed 8.4 kg and was 64 cm long.

According to US growth charts, Shu Shu would have been well below the 3rd percentile for his weight when he entered the program, but after 6 months of lots of nutritious formula, he was a chunky little boy weighing in at the 50th percentile!

For those not familiar with growth charts, this means that in the beginning he was smaller than the lowest 3 percent of children measured in the USA. Later, he weighed as much or more than 50 percent of kids his same age in the USA!

After recovering his chance for life through the formula project and the good care of his foster family, Shu Shu was adopted.