Our Referral of Martha, October 29,2007

I came home from work around 5 pm only to know I was helping out in the E.R. that night from 6p-12a. I essentially came home to get a bite to eat and to shower. I knew something was up when the phone rang and John got a big grin on his face and told me to answer the phone. I told him to but he persisted and I saw the caller ID was AGCI...my heart started racing and my voice was shaking. It was Julie telling us to go to our computer....we had our referral of our daughter. Her name was Martha and she was born on September 13th. We got on line and saw all her bio info pop up first as we slowly scrolled down to what we new were pictures of her. We were nervous..you know.....loving this soul that has been out in the universe now has a picture. We didn't want to admit it but lets be honest...we were really hoping she was cute! The first picture we saw was of her crying. It demonstrated the power of one very small child...Then we saw the others. We fell in love with her all over again. Isn't she wonderful??!!
Then came the scrutinizing. My husband and I are in the medical field and we....I should say I....scanned over every portion of the pictures. What is this? Why is this like that? It wasn't as if we would ever decline our referral...she was already ours since the second we laid eyes on her. But more trying to prepare ourselves for anything. I noticed one of her eye's was off a bit and her tongue was partially out of her mouth on a couple pics. My mind started wondering what any on this could mean. Then our pediatrician saw the pics and picked out the eye problem which might be strabismus...according to him. Then he commented on her "protuberant tongue" and some white spots on her face. But he didn't think it was "tuberous sclerosis". What!!! as if I was thinking of any of this. The fear of not being sure about any of this is scary. But we are never guaranteed anything in this life so we were prepared for anything. We even contacted a pediatric ophthalmologist about the eye thing to see if we should be doing anything about it right now, at Hannah's Hope. Turns our she was and is perfect... She has no problem with her eye, she does not have a protuberant tongue and the white spots on her face are barely noticeable and our black friends here have them too. No worries.