Elijah's New Life

Detroit, Michigan — As many babies with unrepaired clefts in developing countries are abandoned, our partner hospitals work closely with orphanages. After cleft surgery, these children are later adopted into loving families. Sometimes, even families in the USA like the Medfords who recently sent us this message.

We chose adoption to add to our family and 4 ½ years after beginning this amazing journey, we brought home our sweet son, Elijah James!

We entered the China program intending to adopt a “healthy” child but after my husband desired to adopt a special needs child, we switched over to the Waiting Child program and were chosen to be the parents to Elijah, a child born with a cleft lip. We brought him home in December of 2011 with no information prior to his time with us other than that his lip had been repaired when he was six-months old.

A client of my husband’s had a friend whose daughter works for Smile Train and she put us in contact with her. To our amazement, a Smile Train doctor was the one who operated on our son. She was able to [find his medical record] and shared with us the pre- and post-surgery pictures, which are precious and allow us to have some information to share with Elijah as he gets older. Smile Train changed the trajectory of our son’s life and we’re forever grateful to them and the masterful hands of Dr. Liu Jiebiao…He’s a very loved and happy child!

He has brought our family such joy and has the most precious smile, thanks to you!

We are forever grateful,

The Medford family
Jody, Daniella, Lexie, Emily & Elijah