An EAC family update

A beautiful story about a beautiful little girl!

I just wanted to share some good news that we recently experienced... We adopted our daughter, Hattie, from China with EAC in Feb./March 2009. She was a part of the Special Needs program and had cleft lip/palate repaired. We knew going in that she would need additional surgeries.  She had the first of her surgeries this past Wednesday and things could not have gone better or been more orchestrated by God himself.

 A fissure had formed in the roof of her mouth along the first suture line in her palate and she needed a repair/realignment of the muscle in the soft palate. The doctor was not sure if he would be able to repair either of these because he did not know what had been done in China. Well, once he was able to get in there he found that it wasn't really a fissure that had formed, it was that her palate was never properly closed....now you're thinking this is a bad thing??  In one sense it was, she has had some leakage from her mouth to her nasal passage because of this, but the good part of it was that he had to do much less cutting and repairing because it was never closed. Then he had to realign the muscle in the soft palate that closes off your nasal passage when you swallow and makes certain areas of speech possible. His concern was that normally in foreign countries they just sew the muscle together straight, but a normally formed muscle in its resting position is in "V". In order for him to do it properly he would also need plenty of flesh and other muscle from the back of her throat. Well once he moved on to that area, and got to the muscle, he found it hadn't been sewn together at all. There wouldn't need to be as much repair. He was able to just realign the muscle. Her palate is now noticeably longer and her Dad and I already see some changes in her speech just 3 days later.

 

This was as scary a thing as I've ever experienced, but I do know that He has a wonderful and great plan for each of us. We were able to come home after just 1 night in the hospital, versus 3 that they thought we would be staying. This little girl has blessed so many people and we were even able to share our story with her recovery room nurse who is considering adoption with her husband. We were thrilled to tell her our experience with EAC and how y'all have blessed our lives with 3 great kids. (one adoption from Russia in '06, 2 siblings, one from China)

I just wanted to share this amazing story with everyone there....I feel like we never can hear too much good news!

Sincerely,

Traci, Harris & Hattie