Toby is a four month old orphaned baby who has an allergy to standard formula and a heart condition

This is the story of Toby (nick name). Toby was born four and half months ago, sadly being destined to be an orphan. He was given into the care of an orphanage in Chiang Mai, Thailand in December weighing 4.4 kg. Despite the care he received he slept little, ate little and cried often. By February he was 3.5 kg. The orphanage recognised after two months this child was not going to survive so contacted Kingdom Kids and asked if they would be prepared to take on an additional three month old baby boy.

Kingdom Kids Foundation was established and is run by Robyn and Terry Collins to provide for orphans with special needs. The goal is to foster the child while catering for the development need allowing the child to reach their fullest potential, whatever that might be. In this way Kingdom Kids Foundation plans on enabling the child to find their “forever family” through adoption or a permanent foster situation in a small family as opposed to growing up in an institution, which is not known for good outcomes. In a Buddhist culture, an orphan is already at a significant disadvantage given the presiding belief is “bad karma” which is as a result of something the child or their family have done in a previous life. A special needs orphan (clearly even more bad karma) has little hope but for the love and care of this wonderful Australian couple.

Toby was little more than his birth weight at aged four months. He had skin rashes covering his face and head and appeared to be in constant pain. The gloves seen in the above photograph are to stop him scratching the skin. The rashes had become open bleeding sites risking further infections. Bowel motions were similar to 0-3 day old babies, being a black sticky substance. Medical checks discovered one or several holes in the heart between left and right ventricles but this in itself did not explain the lack of weight gain. A permanent nasogastric tube was inserted into his stomach to allow him to be fed, despite this, no weight improvements were seen.

Robyn is a trained Paediatric Physiotherapist and together with Terry have fostered over 50 children, seeing 25 of those finding their “forever family” so has some experience to say the least. It was immediately apparent that Toby (his english nick-name given to him by Terry and Robyn) was not getting sufficient nutrition which was probably leading to the many other symptoms or side-effects on his health. Feeding time was quickly referred to as fighting time. All but immediately that any feeding began, he would thrust his back outwards appearing to be in pain. After a variety of feeding (and sleeping) solutions failed, Robyn began to question the baby formula as being the potential cause.

Enter at this point the trial of a product out of New Zealand made from goats milk, manufactured by Dairy Goat Co-operative and marketed in Thailand by their business partners. The impact was miraculous and almost immediate. The first impact is he now shows no pain or discomfort from feeding. He will now suck up to 40-50 mls at each feed and when he tires the remainder is feed via the tube. The skin rashes began to dissipate and clear and the open sores began to heal. He began to gain weight! Back thrusts stopped post feeding and sleep for up to four hours at a time became possible (for baby and carers). At the time of writing, Robyn and Terry have been rewarded for their efforts by the most beautiful smile from the gorgeous 4 month old shown below.

Thank you Dairy Goat Association of NZ. You have some serious fans of your work in Northern Thailand.

Toby’s next challenge is to reach a weight of 9 kg a requirement for successful heart surgery to be scheduled.

Supporters of Kingdom Kids in Australia and New Zealand are now beginning to raise $1800 to purchase sufficient DG products to allow him to gain weight and to grow sufficiently to allow heart surgery.