Support Abandoned Intellectually Disabled Children

Anyone can have a child and call themselves a “parent”. But a real parent is someone who puts that child above their own selfish needs and wants.

An innocent one month old baby boy was discarded by his parents in Adambakkam, Chennai. The story goes that a scan taken during the antenatal period revealed that the baby had defective abdominal walls (a type of congenital defect that allows the stomach, the intestines, or other organs to protrude through an unusual opening that forms on the abdomen), cystic lesions, and a deflected urinary bladder. Had they known, the parents say, they would not have carried the baby to full term. But the hospital says that the parents were aware of their child’s condition. The boy’s birth revealed new anomalies such as the absence of a lower left limb, absence of the left kidney, and a rigid scrotum. In shock, the parents abandoned him at the hospital despite receiving counselling. The mother having refused to feed her son even once! This baby needs surgery that requires his parents’ consent but they refuse to give it.

The hospital authorities frantically searched for a home but no one was willing to accept the child. Hearing about our work with abandoned children, they approached us and we could not say no. The child is now part of the Sri Arunodayam family.  While still at the hospital, two of our nurses visited him each day and underwent a special training to be able to take care of him when he got home. He does not have intellectual disabilities but has very severe physical anomalies that are endangering his life.

On the 25th of February we held his naming ceremony. We searched for a name that would embody the story of his life. And we chose “Sabari” (a tributary of the river Godavari) because, like a river, love too cuts a new path whenever it meets with an obstacle. And this pretty much sums up Sabari’s one-month existence here on earth. Considered an obstacle and discarded by the ones who bore him, Sabari’s path led him to a new family that loves and embraces him as their own!

Links:

• https://sriarunodayam.org/