Naomi

November 20, 2008 AGCI, cl/cp, Family Stories 0 Comments

By Sarah, mom to Naomi from China with cleft lip and palate

Our family’s dossier was originally logged in to the CCAA on August 3, 2006, NSN. A long year had passed since that summer, and we received an email that would change our lives. Our agency, All God’s Children, International (AGCI), sent out a prayer request. Their request was for prayers to find families for specific group of children. One look at Naomi…. and we KNEW she was our daughter without a doubt in our hearts. It is hard to explain, because we had not been looking SN.


We quickly contacted our agency and did the medical research necessary to understand what a child that is cleft affect would require. I am a registered nurse, and felt very comfortable with the medical part of this SN. My husband is a psychologist and works with children. He felt comfortable with any emotional needs that came along with ongoing medical needs. We brought our daughter home forever November 2007! Our family has been so blessed!

When we first brought Naomi home she was developmentally behind. In many areas. She was in many ways like a baby, although she was 16 months old. She could not crawl. She could not pull herself up and scoot around a table. She had no muscle tone in her legs. She was very tiny. She weighed only 16 pounds. It was only a matter of months, and she had caught up! She gained about a pound a month after coming home (and this was with palate surgery) and she began to crawl and then scoot. She is now a typical two year old running after her four year old brother! She can run, jump, climb! She is truly amazing!

Naomi had her lip repaired in China when she was 8 months old. After coming home with her, we discovered the organization that funded her lip repair surgery… this organization sent us before and after photos of Naomi in the hospital, as well as her surgical report! What a blessing that was to take those with us to her palate repair!

Naomi had her palate repair surgery done at 19 months old. She did beautifully. She is in speech therapy regularly and her language is blossoming! Her main area on concern with language will be articulation. She will continue to be followed by speech therapy as she progresses into school age. At this point, her next surgical step is a lip revision planned for sometime over the next year. The main area of concern with her lip is trying to improve her ability to move it more.

We are so grateful for that email on that summer day! It forever changed our family! Naomi is a treasure to our family!



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