Haiti earthquake: A mother’s mourning turns to unbound joy

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Rondlie Daniel mourned her baby’s death for five days. She sat outside her flattened home, where he was trapped, and she prayed and cried until the grief and pain forced her to withdraw and take refuge elsewhere.

‘I could not accept the loss,’ she said.

Then, on Monday, she received a call from neighbors. They’d seen people rescuing her 8-month-old boy Sunday night. He was alive. He was with doctors.

Mother and baby Matthew were reunited Monday.

‘It is a miracle,’ she said. ‘When I look at him I believe in God and I think things will be OK.’

The situation was touch-and-go when rescuers finally extricated Matthew from the ruins and rushed him to a sprawling field hospital that the Israeli army had established over the weekend in a grassy lot behind an industrial plant.

Israeli doctors who received him said his body was so shrunken by dehydration that they figured him to be half his actual age. He was near death. They had to resuscitate him, fill him with fluids, oxygen and glucose and hope for the best.

Continue reading A mother’s mourning turns to joy.

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Photos: Earthquake hits Haiti Video: Haiti earthquake and its aftermath