Photo: Lou Xiaoying

About once a week I have this conversation with a mother I know, or else a mother I don't know at all, on the playground or some other social hub of my world: One person says, "Are you going to have a third baby?" and the other sputters, "WHAT? Why would I do THAT?" or "Oh I can't afford that. We definitely don't have the space," or else, "I am not nearly competent enough to take care of that many children at once." (Okay, I admit it, that last one is me....Actually, those are all me.)

So I am overwhelmed just reading about Lou Xiaoying, the Chinese rubbish collector who rescued more than 30 abandoned babies over the course of her life. Although she lived in poverty with her husband and her own children, Lou personally raised 4 of the children and found homes for the rest. According to the Daily Mail, Lou said, "The whole thing started when I found the first baby, a little girl back in 1972 when I was out collecting rubbish. She was just lying amongst the junk on the street, abandoned. She would have died had we not rescued her and taken her in. I realized if we had strength enough to collect garbage how could we not recycle something as important as human lives."
She adopted her youngest child when she was 82.

Now, according to the Huffington Post, Lou Xiaoying is dying of kidney failure, and trying to raise money to help support her youngest children after she is gone. She is being hailed as a hero in her community, and no wonder. Any mothering has echoes of the heroic in it, but when you add extreme poverty and an even more extreme altruism, when you think of the children whose lives had no value to anyone but Lou, well, it kind of makes you want to rise to the occasion, to find the bit of Lou Xiaoying in all of us.

(Read the whole article to learn more about how China's policies have likely contributed to the large number of abandoned babies and about how you can contribute to Lou Xiaoying's family.)

Read More:
The Controversy Over Older Mothers
The Baby You Have to Give Back