needs.

I resolve to be thankful all month.  Some days it is difficult to be thankful that Sweet P is a zillion miles away when she could be home with us.  The last few days are the first I have been truly grateful for the fact that Sweet P is living in an orphanage.  


You see, we got the draft of the long-awaited child history document on Friday.  Hopefully that means the official copy and the other papers we need with it will be here shortly.  It was full to the brim of new information about our baby girl.  Some quite surprising:  her parents' full names and addresses were included, which may be helpful if Sweet P ever desires to find them.  Yet much quite disturbing:  we read some of the intimate details of how and why Sweet P came to live in the orphanage and why she suffers from hydrocephalus.  


I have yet to talk here about Sweet P's medical need.  Mostly because everyone has some sort of issue going on, and hers is what it is.  Any of my children could develop any number of issues tomorrow and we'd just deal with it as necessary and live life to the fullest.  But, I have found myself talking about it with some of you and getting blank stares since I forget who I've gone into detail with about it.  I would love for more friends to pray with us specifically.  

Hydrocephalus is also known as water on the brain.  Here's a little info from wikipedia about it (with some editing done by me):

Pediatric hydrocephalus affects one in every 500 live births, making it one of the most common developmental disabilities, more common than Down syndrome or deafness. It is the leading cause of brain surgery for children in the United States. 

Sweet P has had a shunt in her brain since a few months old which regulates the fluid on her brain, since her brain cannot do it naturally.  This type of need is relatively easy to deal with; it requires periodic doctor visits to ensure the shunt is working correctly.  All doctor reports about her say she is meeting the developmental milestones as expected.  However, these benchmarks are a bit skewed considering she has lived almost all of her 26 months of life in an orphanage.  (The general rule is, for every three months in less-than-optimal care, she will be about one month behind... until she lives with us a while and will catch up quickly to children her age.)

I'm praying today that her caregivers hold her a few more minutes and give her even one more hug and read one more book with her.  My heart aches to do all these thing for her but know that time is coming very soon. 

Give thanks to Him and praise His name!  Psalm 100:4

Today I will be thankful.  

Today I will thank my Lord for Sweet P's precious life.  

Today I will praise Him to be a mommy of three.

Blessings, angela