Part of the reason I share my blog with the public is so that maybe more people with consider adopting a child with a cleft lip/palate. Cleft lips/palates are not life threatening, nor do they affect intelligence. My daughter does not speak clearly, but I do hope she will speak clearly in the future. She may never have perfectly "normal" speech and that is just fine with me. I was shocked to recently read a post from a person considering adopting a child with a cleft. Her main concern was that the child may never speak clearly. Wow. So many children waiting for families have much more serious issues than speaking clearly.
Sarah had her lip repaired in China. Her palate was repaired here. When she is 4 she will have a lip revision and have her collumnae lengthened. When she is 7 she will have a bone graph. That may be it. Surgeries are tough to get through for all of us, but as parents, we do what we have to do.
Sarah attends speech therapy, but so do so many others who are not cleft-affected.
If you are considering adopting a child with a cleft, do plenty of research, as I did. And then make your decision. Adopting Sarah was one of the best decisions I ever made.
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2 comments:
Great post! I can't tell you how many bio kids without cleft I've worked with who needed intense & pretty major speech therapy!
Sarah is simply adorable!
You are so right ... many people focuss on the isues the kids may have now rather than the isues they will face in the future if the are not adopted. I think if people are truly adpting "for the Kids", the first ones to be adopted should be the "difficult to place" kids, the ones that will have the most difficult time growing up on their own.
Thank you for being their voice
blessings John
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