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The following article is reprinted from Volume 1, number 2 of the newsletter of Families with Children from China of the San Francisco Bay Area.
As for so many parents, the day we saw and held our daughter for the first time will be forever etched in our memories. For the Ho family, that day was December 1, 1994, a hot and humid day in Sanshui, China. After waiting for so long, we finally had our beautiful and—we thought—healthy baby.
Jade was approximately four to six weeks old when we brought her home. Over the next several months she developed normally and, with the exception of chronic ear infections, was healthy. By the time she was eight to nine months old, we became concerned because she could not sit up at all, nor could she crawl. She had learned to roll over at around six months, and that was how she moved around. At first our pediatrician thought she was just developmentally delayed because of her time in the orphanage in China. By the time she was ten months, however, she was showing no progress, and we were very concerned. We were finally referred to a pediatric neurologist at Oakland’s Children’s Hospital. The afternoon of the day she had her MRI, the neurologist called us with the diagnosis “cerebral palsy due to brain damage.”
At first we were so relieved to know what was causing her problems, it did not really sink in that Jade had brain damage and a potentially disabling condition. Our next reaction was anger when the doctor said the type of injury Jade had probably could have been prevented. This type of injury normally occurs during or after birth because the baby is mishandled. Of course, we will never know what really happened, and we quickly realized anger would not solve Jade’s problem. We then asked the doctor, “What can we do to help her?” Jade’s prognosis was good: the part of her brain that was damaged controlled her gross motor skills (sitting, crawling, standing, and walking). The doctor felt that with physical therapy she would eventually overcome all or most of her disability. We immediately put her in therapy, and after five months she has improved greatly. She can now sit and does a “combat crawl.” This tiny child has the determination and motivation to keep trying again and again.
Why am I writing about this? One reason is that our doctor took Jade’s MRI to an international conference of neurologists and explained her history. Afterwards two doctors from Mainland China came up to her and stated that if that child had been left in the orphanage, she would not have made it. That was such a horrifying thing for us to hear. Apparently there are many children in China with cerebral palsy caused by widespread but dangerous birth practices.
If anyone reading this has been thinking of adopting a special needs child—go for it! While at times it has been difficult (especially when people say to us, “Why don’t you take her back and exchange her?” and other insensitive remarks), it has also been more rewarding than I can put into words. Each time she accomplishes something, we celebrate, because we know she has worked so hard to do it. Jade has some additional problems related to cerebral palsy, but regardless of what some people think we should do, we would not trade this beautiful little bundle of love and happiness for anything in the world. She has changed our lives in a way we never imagined when we decided to adopt—all for the better!
Terry Ho lives with her husband and daughter Jade in Concord, California.