The wisdom of elders

This is a bit of a roundabout story to explain a little something about what lead me to the Special Needs adoption program in the first place, so bear with me. This is a story that begins with a moment between my own mother and I, just after I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 29. It bears mentioning that my mother had suffered from the same kind of cancer at about the same point in her young life, and had survived it. I had been in fourth grade when she was diagnosed, and after watching her go through surgeries and chemotherapies, the poisoning, the wasting and the hair loss, I had come to believe that this was the worst and most barbaric manner of thing in all the world. All through my childhood I secretly swore to myself that if I ever found out I had cancer, I would just let my life end, rather than suffer through anything like what I'd watched my mother go through. (But, oh, when you are very young, you fear death so much less).

On the day that I was diagnosed, I really couldn't believe it. I felt the bottom dropping out of my world. I felt trapped. It's one thing, after all, to think in the abstract about a diagnosis like this, and about the possibility of just letting your life come to an end with that diagnosis. I sat at my mother's table and I felt that, meteorlike, I weighed several tons. Like I might just drop right through the crust of the earth and out the other side into the stratosphere. I felt like I might spontaneously combust, or just drop dead on the spot. But none of these things happened, and there I sat - just me and my life sentence, my worst fear made real.

What I did, of course, was start to cry.

"But what...?" I whimpered. "But how...? But, I can't DO this!"

My mother, sitting across the table from me, didn't get up and hug me, or even take my hand. Instead, she said four sharp words: "Snap out of it!"

I couldn't believe my ears. She might as well have slapped me in the face. I felt like I had just experienced the ultimate betrayal - as if at the moment of my greatest need, when I had hit bottom and all of creation had abandoned me, my own mother had turned the cold shoulder to my grief and panic.

Let me just say that this is not at all like my mother. She is a loving and gentle person, a person who will do anything for anyone. Yes, she is strong and athletic and independent, fearless, practical, adventurous. But my mother wouldn't hurt a fly, and has the habit of apologizing whenever someone is angry with her, even if she would be better off standing up for herself. So it turned my world upside-down when she said those words to me. I was deafened by them. I could hear nothing else for weeks. Those words made me angry. They sparked a thermonuclear rage in me. They ignited a firestorm of self-righteous fury which hardened my skin into a carapace and honed my mind to a sharp and deadly point. I had no mission left in my mind but to show her that I was too tough to be hurt by her belittling words.

Can you see where this is going? Naturally, the anger that my mother had stirred in me was the one and only thing that made it possible for me to make it from the day of diagnosis through my first dreaded chemotherapy treatment without losing my mind with fear and panic. It got me through my first couple of chemos, determined to show that I could be as cold and tough as she had been at that moment. By the time I began to simmer down and agree with my then-boyfriend who had tried to reason that maybe, just maybe she had a point, I was in the swing of treatments and realized that not only could I survive this, I already had begun to do so. No point in turning back now.

There is a survival instinct that comes into play at the darkest of moments, and this carried me through the year of treatments (which become worse and worse as you go along). And before I knew it, as things happen in life, my year was done and I was set free from my shackles again, astonished to discover, as the months passed and my hair grew and my skin lost its chemical pall and regained some luster, that I was capable of rebirth.

It was only much, much later that I got over my anger with her, and realized that those four sharp, seemingly heartless words: "Snap out of it!", were the only words that could have carried me to a point where I had the necessary will to survive.

Ultimately, though it took some time (maybe two years after the end of treatment) to find my feet and my confidence in life again, my experience with cancer changed me for the better, and drastically so. I also think that without that experience I would most likely not have considered applying for the Special Needs adoption program. (and I think I should mention that Special Needs adoption relates to the adoption of any child with medical needs, surgical, medical, therapeutic etc) With everyone around us saying that we wouldn't be wise to take on a child with medical issues, I probably would have given in to the fears of others were it not for the fact that I myself, an unusually hearty and healthy child with no medical conditions whatsoever, had turned out to have an indicator for cancer in the prime of my life. No one could have predicted that, certainly not my parents (no study has proved that our type of cancer is genetic or transferable in any way). So I figured, even if I had given birth to a biological child, or adopted a seemingly healthy child, I would have run the unknowable risk that that child might have an undiagnosed and potentially life-threatening condition. Why, then, would I want to reject the adoption of a child with a known quantity of medical needs? What made me think that the choice of a "healthy child" was mine to make? In my experience, it was not.

I am endlessly grateful for that early experience, then, no matter how traumatic. Without it, there is every chance that I would never have had the privilege, the unmeasurable joy of having the Q as my daughter.

footnote: I fully believe that my survival instinct would have kicked in, even without my mother's very wise and well-timed wakeup call. I do not believe that I really would have let my life end at the age of 29. I am an optimist to the core, and the base instinct for survival is built in to the human condition. We are capable of suffering so very much more than we can ever imagine in our rational mind (as has been proved time and time again in the aftermath of the Haiti quakes). That said, I shudder to think how I would have made it through those first few weeks without the anger that my mother gave me from the depths of her own experience. Having been through it herself, in an era when the cancer treatment was far more barbaric, random and unrelieved than it is now, she knew in some part of her what I most needed at that moment. She must also have known that I would react with anger, and that she herself would have to suffer through my wrath in addition to her own fear for the life of her only daughter. Her act, albeit instinctive, was one of the greatest and most unexpected gifts that she has ever given me. I can only hope to repay it by giving my own understanding of the world, and how to survive it, to my daughter as the years pass.

- Maia http://wanderersdaughter.blogspot.com

The worst moments of the heart

(This is Q today - I had to post this picture first so as to remind myself how healthy and strong she is before launching into my story)

In March of 2009, our daughter went in for her second cleft surgery. She had had a full successful palate repair the previous October. With no fistulas to repair, her second would be a relatively simple surgery compared to the first. It would entail the cosmetic completion of the closure of her lip, which had been "tacked" in October to partially close the wide gap.


After only about 2 hours of surgery (the first surgery had taken four hours) our surgeon came out to tell us that the surgery had gone beautifully. As before, we breathed a huge sigh of relief. But moments later, we learned from the anesthesiologist that she had stopped breathing while they were bringing her her out of anesthesia. She stopped breathing again in my arms just minutes later in the recovery room. She would stop breathing four times before they were able to stabilize her.

This is something that can happen when small children go under general anesthesia - even in a simple surgery. We never thought it would happen to us. Honestly, it's too painful for me to retell this story (or even re-read my post) so I'm just going to reprint my post from that day. I have never been so mortally terrified, or cried so hard, or felt so utterly bereft in my entire life.

We will, of course, have this fear in our hearts during each future surgery, lest it could happen again to our strong, healthy child. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Every single terrifying minute was worth it, for the privilege of living with this amazing child every day.

- Maia (http://wanderersdaughter.blogspot.com)This is me and Q at 5:30 am, bundling up for our trip to the hospital. Mostly, she was excited for an "adventure" at this point, and even at the hospital she was happy and calm - clearly she didn't have bad memories from last time, which is nice to see.

As some of you already know, we had some pretty serious complications after general anesthesia, and it was touch and go for a while in the recovery room. These were the longest hours of our lives, and I'm pretty sure I've never been so scared. Fortunately, the team at the hospital did a good job of stabilizing her and pulling her through.
The surgery itself went perfectly - the plastic surgeon was thrilled with the result, and QQ is doing much better after a long day and night in the hospital.
Q and daddy in the waiting room.

Some people have asked me in the past why I share things like this, and actually I have a very specific reason: To the uninitiated, it often seems like an insurmountable thing to adopt a child with medical needs. Naturally, it's frightening to contemplate the ramifications. No one wants to voluntarily undergo moments of terror like we did during this surgery, the fear of losing a child. But the fact is, these are not risks specific to children with congenital conditions. Children break bones, they get pneumonia, they choke on things, the risks are there for every one of us. This is just life.
I describe the process in detail in the hopes of demystifying it. What you see here is our life - the actual balance and heft of it. There is nothing I'm hiding, no dark secrets, no hidden dismay. The reason I describe both the good and the bad is because I want people to see that we live a very normal life. Our life doesn't center around Q's medical condition, nor does her condition define her. If anything it makes her a bit tougher, a bit more resilient in spirit. Children who go through things like this learn to take it in stride, and to focus on the best parts of life. They bounce back.

There are tasks that come with a medical condition, of course there are - extra checkups, a larger team of doctors, that sort of thing - but those quickly become routine. Like anything else in life, you adjust, you make room and time, you make it work. It's really a very ordinary process.

The biggest thing about our life with Q is the joy she brings, and that is the part we see every day. That is the thing that stands out. The rest of it just comes around every now and then, a chore, like doing your taxes or getting annual checkups.
As you can see, even in the prep room with both Q and daddy suited up for surgery (M got to carry her in and watch her go under this time) there's no hint of fear or alarm in her. They tell you that kids don't remember the bad parts, and they don't.
The surgery lasted about an hour and a half, including new ear tubes (one of her old ones had become blocked), inspection of the healed palate, and the full closure of the lip. When the plastic surgeon came out, she was radiant and delighted. The surgery, she told us, had gone perfectly. She was thrilled with the results. She also told us that the palate appeared to have healed beautifully and that no further work was necessary at this time either on the hard or soft palate. This was what we had hoped to hear - the best case scenario.

After that, however, the anesthesiologist came out, and I could tell as soon as she started talking that something had gone wrong.
M and I caught a pretty nasty upper-respiratory flu of some sort while we were in San Francisco, and it was a tough one to kick. It was so hard on us that I was pretty certain they'd have to reschedule Q's surgery. It seemed hard to imagine that she had spent days in a small hotel room with two people as sick as we were, and not catch anything.
Time passed, however, and she appeared healthy. I was nervous because I knew that a respiratory tract infection poses danger during general anesthesia. We were careful to tell the surgeon at our pre-op appointment about our illness. But Q had no signs of cough and her lungs sounded clear, she had no fever and all seemed well. Both the ENT and the plastic surgeon gave us the go-ahead to proceed with the scheduled surgery.

It was only after they removed the breathing tube post-surgery, we were told, that they discovered some congestion had been present deep in the lungs. It was very slight - her illness was mild, but even that was enough, in a child this small, to cause her airways to close up with anesthesia.
The anesthesiologist told us that they'd stabilized her, and that she was in the recovery room doing fine.
The first minutes in the recovery room.
As it turned out, however, her issues were not so easily resolved. The narcotics in her system exacerbated her breathing issues. She was taking juice from me just moments after surgery, but after several swallowed she suddenly gave a kind of hoarse ghasp and her eyes glazed over. Then I could see her heaving for air, and within moments her lips started turning blue.
We were immediately shuttled back out of the room while the medical team converged on her. There is no possible way to describe the bottomless fear of a moment like this, so I won't try. It was the worst moment of my life.
I have M's mom to thank for having the presence of mind to document this process with my camera. This is the shot she took of the lonely hallway down which we stared, petrified, for what felt like hours as they worked on stabilizing her again.
Back in the recovery room. The team had given her drugs that would reverse the narcotics in her system so that her natural functions could take over again. But the narcotics can't be reversed too quickly, and while we were back in the RR, she stopped breathing a third time. As we waited in the outer foyer this time, I have to admit I really thought we were losing her.
Back in the recovery room and this time no seizing...but by this time I was too gunshy to hold her again. I can't tell you the horror of feeling your only child seize up and go bloodless in your arms. I had to step away and let M do it this time. Fortunately, her airways did not seize again.
Neither, however, did she wake up. After a length of time, I could see M getting worried that maybe she had gone into some sort of coma. The doctor came in and looked at her pupils, and then nurse did a reflex test on the bottom of her foot - at which point her foot gave a good, healthy, annoyed kick - that was when I knew she was OK. It did take her a while to regain consciousness, but the doctor explained that the narcotics were still in her system, and that since the surgery itself was not a terribly painful one, the narcotics just knocked her out. Her little body had some recovering to do as well, after all that trauma.
It took a while for her breathing to return to normal and it was terribly difficult to watch her little torso heaving so unnaturally. But you could see when it ended, and it ended quite suddenly.
Her body relaxed, her eyes popped open, and she looked around at us alertly. You could see her craning to see people walking downt he hall, looking around the room for things she might want to touch. She even gave a chuckle and a little dance-jiggle when she saw the Pooh Bear decals on the glass wall. You can see the difference in her face in this photo.
There's the alertness back again as we load up for the trip to our overnight room in the pediatrics ward.
Reaching for Daddy's hand.
Rolling into our room. The tube I'm holding is her free-flowing oxygen, which helped to increase the oxygen saturation in her cells while her airways and body recovered.
Visiting with grandparents in the room. Once she recovered from the narcotics, you could see how much easier the actual surgery was on her system than the first one. With no cartilege involved, she was in very little pain, alert, chipper and active.
It was still a long and mostly sleepless night - the trauma had left her whole system oversensitive and she was having allergic reactions to the adhesive used to stick on her monitors, and particularly to the tape which had covered her eyes during surgery. This left her patchy, red, and extremely itchy. She also hates to have her hands and feet confined, so the IV in her hand and the oxygen monitor on her foot were a source of unending fury for her.
Still, the difference was marked from October's rough recovery. She was even exceptionally affectionate this time, giving out kisses, flirting, hugging, and trying to giggle even through her tape and stitches. Late in the night, as the three of us piled into the narrow hospital bed, she got particularly schmoopy and started getting M and I to give eachother kisses by turning our faces forcibly toward one another with her hands. This made her smile and chuckle every time. As she was sinking into a blessed (if brief) latenight nap, she grabbed my hand and M's and linked them over her back before falling asleep. Can you even believe that? The way her mind works never ceases to amaze me.
This morning, as we packed our belongings to go home. A whole new QQ. She was beyond delighted to be freed from her tethers of monitor cords and IV tubes, and toddled manically around the room collecting all the toys she'd been loaned.


Here she even backed up against the changing table to "pose" for me. And what's that in her right hand? Yup, a box of Cheerios. Munchkin decided to use this particularly traumatic occasion to start eating cheerios by the handful, as well as applesauce from a spoon - stitches be damned. I can see that progress will happen by leaps and bounds once she's healed. And you could already hear her making new sounds whith her mouth (her "mama" changed and became much more crisp and round-sounding overnight, and she was making little "Puh" puffs with her new lips, which is thrilling!), so I am excited to hear how her language progresses over the next weeks.
QQ's lip does in fact look seamless -as much of it as one can see around the bandages and glue. I can't wait to see what it looks like once healed and uncovered. What you see in her nose are plastic tubes that hold the nostrils in a widened position. These will stay in for a week (we hope) or as long as we can get her to keep them in. The idea is that a bit of scar tissue will form around the tube and bolster the cartilege where her nose is naturally flatter on the cleft side.
It did our hearts good to see how happy she was to find herself back at home. She actually crowed outloud when we pulled up to the curb, and wanted to parade up and down the sidewalk in the unseasonably warm sun for a while before going inside for her long-delayed lunch.
We gave her an episode of her beloved Yo GabbaGabba, and then put her down for her nap, where she was palpably radiant with joy to be back among her own things. So happy was she, in fact, that she didn't even complain when we put on the hated arm braces that she railed so bitterly against after the last surgery.

Fear Itself

During the time between our official application to the SN adoption program and our referral, I went through a lot of stress and angst. It isn’t that I suffered from doubt. Quite the opposite - if anything I was wildly over-confident, even cavalier in my certainty that we had made the right decision, in spite of everyone (and there were a few) who doubted us.

But I did vacillate quite a bit over our choice of conditions and what we could or couldn't handle. I changed our list of conditions at least half a dozen times that first year. I worried that we would somehow have made the wrong choices - too many conditions on our list or (more often) too few. I never once erased a condition, but I added several...so many, in fact that I feared the SN department would write me off as loony. I worried that, by some careless mark on a piece of paper, some space left blank, we would somehow let the exact child that was meant for us slip through our fingers. I worried sometimes about finances, of course, and insurance. I worried about health and survival rates. My greatest fear - the bogeyman in the closet, the hulking shadow that loomed over me when I woke with a start in the night - was that international relations would suddenly take a turn for the ugly, and the whole program would come to a screeching halt before we ever made it to referral.
But here’s the thing: all of the worries, fears, concerns both valid and hysterical, all of the restless, sweaty nights, the self doubt, the stress manifestations that crept into my daily life (oh, yeah, I was pretty crazy by the last three months), all of the moments when panic swamped me like a swift and toxic tide, all of that disappeared as soon as we brought our daughter home from China.

OK, well, that’s a slight blurring of the facts. I’m rounding down. The absolute reality is that they all disappeared....well, approximately three and a half weeks after coming home. It’s tough for me to remember precisely when, what with the sleep deprivation and the intestinal parasites.

But the point is that they never returned. Not one. Never again did a single one of those fears, doubts, or worries darken my door. Now, in fact, they seem laughable - the ravings of a fever dream. What on earth was I so worried about?

Surgeries? Meh. Sleep deprivation? Maybe I don’t get quite as much as I once did, but I don’t miss it. Speech therapy? You know what? I really kind of enjoy it! Health insurance? Well, it’s no secret that that’s a big pain in the posterior. So what else is new? Public reaction to my child’s (very visible) condition, before, during and after various surgeries? Hahah! She’s the most charismatic kid I’ve ever met. I actually have to turn away requests from friends and family for QQ time. She’s a freakin’ rockstar. She has fans all over north Denver. What am I saying? She has been featured on children’s fashion sites in both the US and Europe. And yes, that’s in spite of the fact that her corrective surgery is far from complete.

Ever boy between the ages of 3 and 10 stops in his tracks and goes out of his way to ask about her and meet her. I swear, pre-teen boys never spoke to me before I had QQ by my side. We are in big, big trouble when she’s of dating age.

So, you might wonder, do I live a life of sunshine and roses? Does a dark cloud never pass over my sun? Well, no. Almost no. 99.9% no. OK, the truth is that there is on overwhelming, slightly hysterical and often crippling fear that comes over me, oh, maybe 5 or 10 times a day. I am terrified, humbled, brought to my emotional knees by the fear of the fragility of life - the fear of losing her.

My daughter is vigorous, charming, bright, loving, energetic, athletic, talented, and shining with life and joy. She is healthier than your average bear. In the first year that she was home, she barely had so much as a sniffle. When she finally succumbed to Swine Flu, very early in the new season, she came through with flying colors and barely a whimper. Her development has been judged above average by her therapists and doctors, and she grows like a weed. And yet I fear daily for all of those little things that can erase a person from your life unexpectedly. Throughout all my obsessive pre-adoption research and soul-searching, I thought of many a pitfall, but I never considered the possibility that my one and only issue would be that I would love my child so wildly, helplessly, unconditionally and profoundly that I would live for the rest of my life in mortal and constant fear of the possibility of losing her.


So here is the one piece of advice I have for any prospective adoptive parent of a child with medical needs: All of your concerns are for naught. I know it’s impossible to just let them go without a thought, but in fact that’s what you should do, because none of them will count a whit once you become the parent of that child.

Fear only that you will love that child too much, because that is the only true danger.

When they say that all you have to fear is fear itself, believe it. And learn to live with it.

- Maia, lucky and desperately infatuated mommy of QQ

The wanted one

Possibly the most unexpected revelation in the course of our special-needs adoption came when the three of us, my husband, our daughter and I, waltzed in to our first cleft clinic at the hospital we had chosen for our daughter’s surgeries, eager and full of anticipation. At the time, we had been home for just five months and our daughter had been through only the first of two major surgeries to begin repairing her clefts. During the clinic, her first surgery would be evaluated by five or six different specialists, and a plan laid out for her future surgeries, speech therapy, and dental work.
QQ during her first two months at home.

When we met QQ, she was 11 months old with a very broad unilateral cleft lip and palate. Rather atypically, she had not had her lip surgery done while still in China, so her entire cleft was still wide open. When she smiled, which she did frequently, the gap was nearly an inch wide. Once home, our chosen surgeon felt the timing was optimal to close her palate as soon as possible, and so we had her first surgery done just two months after coming home. That first surgery included a complete closure of the hard and soft palate (very successful, with no fistulas or tears post-surgery) and a partial closure, or “tacking” of the lip. Our surgeon chose not to close the lip entirely on that first visit in order to let the muscles relax into their new position, thus hopefully allowing for a more successful closure on the second visit. Our surgeon felt this was the best method based on the rather extreme width of our daughter’s cleft and the fact that it had remained unrepaired for almost a year. Her second surgery, and the full closure of the lip, would happen in the early spring, some six months later.

QQ after her first surgery, lip still only partially closed.

When we walked into that first cleft clinic, it was with a giddy sense of anticipation. We were almost goofy with the joy of our new family and the plans we were making for the future. The first surgery had been difficult for all of us - a long, sleepless night in the hospital, and three solid weeks of medication and sleep deprivation to follow. In spite of that, the whole adoption journey had been such a wild, spinning, joyful adventure that even something as grim as planning for future surgeries made our cheeks ache with spontaneous smiles. It isn’t that we didn’t take the process seriously - oh, we did! Like avid freshman on the first day of college, we were eager to take copious notes, do thorough research, pay attention to every detail, and carry out the doctors’ orders like the good students we so genuinely hoped to be.

So it was a bit of a shock to us to walk into a conference room and find ourselves in the thrall of a distinctly funereal atmosphere. Immediately, we tried to adjust our faces and sober our attitudes to fit the general mood. Something was definitely amiss, but, in the haze of our post-adoption bliss, we were hard-pressed to put our fingers on what it was.

As the discussion portion of the clinic began and progressed, we quickly came to realize that this portion, prior to the surgical consultations, was something like a supervised therapy session. Hospital employees were scattered among the families at the long conference table, opening up topics and venues of discussion. For comfort, a banquet table was set with sandwiches and juice bottles. Grievances were aired, and families were encouraged to share their struggles and fears.

In the thick of that forum, my husband and I found ourselves at a loss for words. As other families talked of their turbulent therapy sessions and post-surgery snafus, their grief over their child’s condition, and the long process of coming to terms with it, we found we had nothing to add. We would have been well-prepared to share the vast and myriad pleasures of our early months with our new daughter, our amazement at our good fortune and the rampant joy that she had brought into our lives. But our contributions seemed irreverent in the face of the angst that we saw in the grim, exhausted faces of the parents around us. For these families, giving birth to a child who would need years of surgeries and therapies was profoundly traumatic. For us, having chosen this child and her condition, it was the greatest gift of a lifetime. What a contrast! What a revelation.

We were, on this particular occasion, the only adoptive family in the group. All of the other children attending the clinic were biological, and many of the parents had been unprepared and even unaware during the pregnancy that their child was afflicted with a medical condition. Some of them spoke of the easy time they had had with their first “healthy” children, and what a shock it had been to find that their youngest was to be born with medical issues. Some of them spoke of the initial shock and subsequent lengthy grieving process they went through when they were informed of their child’s condition.

This was the first time it had ever occurred to me what a vastly different experience it is to deliberately adopt a child with a medical need, as opposed to giving birth to such a child. I had never considered the variance in perspective, and it took me by surprise.

To be honest, my husband and I made the decision to adopt a special needs child without a great deal of struggle or deliberation. Though we began our adoption journey in the “traditional” program, we switched into the special needs program just days after our dossier was logged in to the Chinese system. We had not initially researched or even been aware of the special needs program, and it had never occurred to us that children with medical needs would be separated into a different category. Once we learned of the medical needs program, we made the switch within a matter of days. It seemed right. It seemed logical. If children with medical needs were going to have a more difficult time finding families, and if we were prepared to do so, there was no question in our mind that we should choose one of these.

We had good medical insurance, a terrific support system, medical professionals in the extended family, and a stable home life. We knew that, even if we were to adopt through the traditional program, we would run the risk of our child having undiagnosed medical or developmental issues. We also knew that, had we chosen to give birth to a child, we would have run a similar risk. I myself, healthy and vigorous and athletic as I have always been, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 29. No one could have predicted it. It was a rough year of surgery and chemotherapy and several months of recovery, but I survived it. It was not the end of my world...far from it. So to adopt a child with a preexisting medical condition, one we had researched and were prepared for, seemed to us a very sane and logical route.

When we saw our daughter’s photograph for the first time, we felt incredibly fortunate. Yes, her cleft was wide and might present some surgical challenges, but she was otherwise healthy and vigorous, and the grin on her face in those first photos foretold her joyful and open nature. When we made it through the process, the paperwork, the wait, the red tape, and actually found ourselves in China with this amazing child placed in our arms, we felt like we had won the lottery.

I really had never stopped to think what it would feel like to give birth to a child with such a condition, with no preparation, without having chosen that route, done the research, understood the consequences.

I do understand that not everyone who adopts a child (with or without medical needs) has as easy a transition as we have had. I do know that we are fortunate in many, many ways. We bonded, the three of us, without a ripple. Our child is a happy soul, confident, social and loving. She walks lightly on the earth and sees the best in life. Not every adoption goes so smoothly for all involved. But I do see our daughter’s condition as a great gift - the one thing without which she might never have entered our lives. Why her birth parents were forced to give her up we will most likely never know. It may have been a cultural stigma that made it difficult for them to raise a child born with a cleft. It may have been the medical system in China, and their inability to afford the surgeries and therapies involved. No matter what the reason, I can’t help feeling incredibly, profoundly, miraculously fortunate that this particular child calls us her parents.

Our daughter will, at a conservative estimate, need a dozen surgeries (both major and minor) before the age of 20. She has currently been in speech and eating therapy for more than six months, and will most likely need therapy for months and even years to come. But far less than being a burden to bear for us, her condition is the one element that made it possible for her to be our daughter, and for that I will be forever, infinitely, and joyfully grateful.

- Maia