Eliana this morning:
Eliana six months ago:
Gotcha - April 7, 2008
Adoption Day - April 8, 2008
Six months ago today we were in Guangzhou China with our new 21 month old daughter, Eliana ZuGuo. We first met her on April 7, 2008 after knowing her sweet face only through pictures for the previous 9 months. In the international adoption community, 9 months is actually a very short wait to bring your child home. However, I can assure you that it did not feel short at all. She turned one year old the same week we sent our "Letter of Intent" to adopt her to China in July 2007. We missed her first birthday, her first steps, her first words, and many other milestones while we were waiting. And waiting. And waiting. We eagerly awaited updates and new photos. We received one update in January 2008 and another shortly before we traveled. She officially became a part of our family on April 8th. Look how much she has grown and changed in the past six months! She is happy and healthy, her cleft palate is closed, she understands almost everything we say in her second language, English, and she can clearly communicate with us through words, American Sign Language, and her own unique gestures and body language. She is a smart, active, determined, tough, socially outgoing, engaging and thoroughly delightful little girl. We couldn't be happier. On one hand, it is hard to believe that she has already been home 6 months, but on the other hand, it feels as if she has always been a part of our family.
It took us a long time to pick a name for Eliana. Those of you who have been following this blog from the first post on July 29, 2007 will remember that our first blog title was "Waiting for Guo". It was a plain text blog with a light pink background. I gradually figured out what I was doing and added more pictures, gadgets and tools. I did my first blog makeover with the brown, turquoise and gold background that I have used ever since and I custom created the blog header with Guo's referral photo. When we finally picked the name Eliana, I changed the blog title to "Expecting Eliana" and updated the blog header with the new name and our most recent photo of her (from August 2007). Here is a little look back - you can click the photos to see them full sized:
November 11, 2007 - First blog makeover
December 27, 2007 - New blog title & header and name announcement
During the long wait, working on the blog was a great outlet for me. When Ben was in school during the day, and when Adam was traveling and I was up late at night, I put a lot of time and energy into the blog. During the wait, the adoption blogs of other families were an invaluable resource to me - like life lines to hang on to during the long wait. My own blog became my adoption journal and hopefully has helped a few people get through their own wait, knowing they were not alone in what they were feeling. It has been a labor of love. These days, most of my time and energy are being spent elsewhere during the day. :o) My blog is still a place for me to record things for Eliana to read in the future and a personal journal of sorts. It is a way for my family who lives far away to keep updated on her progress. I don't have time to create a pretty blog background from scratch these days, so I am so glad I found this free blog background site -
The Cutest Blog on the Block. They are going to make it much easier for me to keep the blog looking cute and fresh and to change things up more often.
Some people have asked me why I don't talk about Ben and Adam more on this blog, so I wanted to answer that question. The original intent of the blog was as an adoption journal, not a family blog site. It is still a place to talk about our transitions and how we are continuing to deal with Eliana's ongoing special needs, a place where I can organize my thoughts and record them for posterity and so that other families in similar situations can have someone to relate to. It is also evolving and is becoming more of a place to occasionally update others on our whole family. I am very careful about what I post about Ben here. Teenagers cherish their privacy and believe it or not, don't necessarily want their mommies to announce to the world on a public blog site everything that is going on in their lives. You can imagine the embarrassment if their friends were to find this info on the web! So please know that I love and cherish both of my children and that I am equally involved in both of their lives. Ben actually has his own blog site and is free to write what he wants to share with others about his life there. Enough said.
And speaking of my first born, here is a Ben-approved update. After many years of orthodontics, Ben got his braces off this week - hooray! Here is an "after" photo for you. Last night we attended the end of season tournament/dinner for Ben's high school golf team. I think his golf team picture turned out great, don't you? He is so tall and slim. We recently measured him at 5'11"and he is all legs! In fact, I have to special order his pants. Not too many men have a 34" inseam and still maintain a 28-29" waist, so finding pants is a challenge to say the least. I told him he is not allowed to get any taller until he fills out his waistline a bit, or I am going to have to learn how to sew!
Some of you who are not familiar with cleft palate issues may have been puzzled when I mentioned above about Eliana's ongoing special needs. The issues that cleft-affected children must deal with go well beyond the initial surgeries to repair the cleft in the lip and/or palate. Now that Eliana understands English, we are starting to address her speech and language issues. She had a developmental screening through our public school system in September and we heard back from the clinician who did her evaluation last week.
As we thought, Eliana is developmentally on target in her social skills and gross and fine motor skills. However, she is lagging behind her peers in her language development. The committee agreed with the clinician's assessment, so Eliana is going to have further evaluation for her speech/language development and more audiological testing to rule out hearing problems as a contributing factor to her speech issues.
Eliana had tubes put in her ears at the same time she had her palate surgically closed on May 30th. We have had Eliana's hearing tested three times, in May (pre-op), July (post-op) and September (follow-up). She has not been fully cooperative during ANY of the hearing tests, so we are still not sure if her hearing is in the normal range at all frequencies. We are going to continue to try to determine that.
Our main concern for Eliana's speech is that she has a very limited repertoire of sounds. She makes almost no consonant sounds, with the exception of m, n, h, y and l (sort-of). We were hoping that after her surgery she would start making some of the 'hard' consonant sounds - b, p, d, t, k, ch, g, etc. But despite our encouragement, she usually substitutes another sound for those letters or just leaves them out completely (deletion). "Daddy" is "a-ee". "Ben" is "en". "Mama" is very clear - it is not a coincidence that around the world, across many languages and cultures, the first word for 'mother' is the same or very similar - it is the easiest first sounds for babies to pronounce! We are hoping that Eliana will be found eligible to receive speech/language services through the county school system's early intervention program. We are not certain yet what level of services, if any, she will receive. We will probably be seeking private speech therapy in addition to any services she will receive through our school system.
Eliana is also scheduled to have an additional surgery on December 8th of this year. This surgery is a reconstructive surgery commonly referred to as a 'lip/nose revision'. The same wonderful surgeon at Children's National Medical Center in DC who performed her palatoplasty earlier this year will be performing this surgery as well. He is a very talented pediatric plastic surgeon. During this surgery, some facial muscles will be reattached to her upper lip. There will also be some reconstruction to her upper lip and her nose. Like many children born with bilateral cleft lip and palate, Eliana's nose and philtrum are very wide and therefore her nostrils are very flat. Her columella (what you may think of as the septum) is almost non-existent. Of course, Adam and I think that Eliana is beautiful just the way she is. We discussed this optional surgery long and hard. We have decided that we think it is best for Eliana to have this surgery and to have it now, before she starts Kindergarten and while she is young enough that she will hopefully not have long-term memories about it. In these uncertain economic times, we also feel it is wise to do the surgery while we have the resources (wonderful medical insurance) to do so. She will have a bright new scar on her lip and nose after her surgery that will take 6 months - 1 year to fade. She will be back in the "no-no's" (arm restraints) and on the soft food diet for 3 weeks post-op again. These decisions are never easy to make. We are not asking for advice or input on this matter here, but we do welcome your support.
This will not be Eliana's last surgery related to her cleft palate. We are hoping to avoid a pharyngeal-flap ("P-flap") surgery, which corrects nasal speech problems, by being aggressive with the speech therapy. Regardless of her speech development, Eliana will need a bone graft surgery to fill in the gaps in her upper gum line when her adult teeth start to come in - sometime around the ages of 7-9. Depending on how her jaw and nose develop as she grows, Eliana may need or want additional reconstructive surgery in high school. That will be her decision, with our guidance and support.
Special needs adoptions are not for the faint of heart. As changes continue in many international adoption programs, including China, many families are jumping out of long waiting lines for "healthy, as young as possible" babies and are choosing the much shorter route of special needs/waiting children adoptions. I believe that adopting a waiting child, whether they have a special need or have simply outgrown the more adoptable age of babies and toddlers, is a wonderful thing, as long as you go into it with your eyes wide open and fully prepared. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life so far. I do, however, have some concerns that some families may not be fully prepared for what they are taking on when adopting a child with a special need. Cleft palate is typically considered a 'minor' special need in the adoption community because it is a correctable condition. Unfortunately, many people commit to adopting a child with cleft palate believing that there will be one surgery after coming home and then they will be done. Not so! That's why adoption blog sites and online support groups are so important to those considering adoption and those waiting to bring home their children. I would encourage anyone considering adopting a cleft-affected child or waiting to bring home their cleft-affected child to join the Adopt Cleft Yahoo! group. They are an invaluable resource of parents who have 'been there, done that' and will answer your questions 24 hours a day - often from parents desperately seeking for answers while in China adopting their cleft-affected child or from the waiting room of a hospital.
I will continue to share our family's adoption experience here for those who wish to continue to follow along. At some point, Eliana may not want me to share information publicly and I may take the blog private at that point. For now, I am glad to be a part of the supportive adoption blogging community. If you have never 'introduced' yourself to me, I would love to know who is following along on our journey! Please let me know who you are by commenting below.
Hugs, Laura Beth
I am volunteering at the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC tomorrow to support Team Love Without Boundaries . This organization does great work in Chinese orphanages, providing nutrition programs in the SWIs, and sponsoring foster care programs. I am supporting runner Michael Allen - our daughters lived in the same orphanage in China and he and his wife Beth emailed me updated photos of Eliana from China last August. They are flying to DC from Colorado so that Michael can run in the race and raise funds for LWB. If you would like to make a tax deductible contribution of any size, please go to http://www.teamlwb.com/Team2008.php You can select to support Michael Allen or any of the other runners on the team - all of the money goes to fund Love Without Boundaries wonderful programs.
Thanks, 
