MaKayla's Story - Segment 2 at Ask Dr Mom: Ask Sandra K. Ellis M.H.

On the way back to our apartment, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up a variety of formulas and the other supplies that are needed to take care of a newborn. When we arrived at the apartment, I asked my daughters what we should call her. They had been watching Anastasia on television, so they suggested Alexandria. From that moment on she was Allie. A year later when her adoption was finalized, we named her Alexandra Danielle Ellis. Alexandra, because it is the Greek root of my name Sandra, and Danielle, because that is what her biological mother put on the birth certificate.

I won’t take time to go through Allie’s story here except to say that when we got her back to the United States at the age of 2 months, we took her to see a pediatrician friend of ours which did a complete physical on her. When he was finished, he sat me down and tried to prepare me for the fact that she would not live. He said she had far too many problems due to malnutrition and every system in her body was shutting down. When I didn’t react the way he expected me to, he said, “Sandy, what makes you think she will live?” My response was, “I don’t believe all the miracles which brought her here was just so she could die. Secondly, if you think she’s bad now, you should have seen her when I found her.”

The real miracle for Allie happened on April 6^th. One of my daughters gave birth to a healthy son three weeks early. We landed on April 8^th. I immediately put my baby on my daughter’s breast milk and then proceeded to pour nutrition into my daughter – green drinks, vitamins, anti-oxidants, minerals, fats – everything I thought she needed for both babies to get all of the nutrition they needed. For four and a half months, my daughter fed both babies – she nursed hers and pumped for mine and they both thrived.

The reason I have shared this part of Allie’s story is so you can begin to understand how and why MaKayla’s story is unfolding. When I left the Philippines with Allie, I saw a need and considered going back to open an orphanage of my own – one that would be different from anything I had seen, but life has a way of taking over again and we get caught up in the thick of thin things. For the first two years after I came back, it seemed that I was constantly fighting to keep Allie and Steve, my husband, alive. There was just one crisis after another. I also realized that due to all of this drama, I had not fulfilled my obligations to pay back the debts I owed, so we began to formulate a plan to get our business launched and off the ground so that we could pay off our debts and then someday (have you ever noticed that someday never comes?) when my obligations had been met and I could afford it, the plan was to go back and open an orphanage.