Love Without Boundaries

When adopting internationally, it can be difficult to put together your child's history. It is so exciting when you are able to find even tiny tidbits of information or even better, photos.

We were fortunate enough to connect with a family in Spain that sponsored Maelyn while she was in foster care and we received pictures of every month of her life. What a gift! Then, while in China, we received more pictures of Maelyn from Holt International. Maelyn was part of a programme that followed her progress while in foster care and they recorded their observations and took pictures on a monthly basis.

This past summer I decided to send an email to Love Without Boundaries, a U.S. charity organization that works with orphanages in China. I honestly didn't think that we would get any information at all -- what were the odds that Maelyn was part of three different organizations?

Love Without Boundaries responded to my email that they did in fact have some information about Maelyn, but that it was very little information. The picture was one that we had already seen, but it was nice to know that they had also followed Maelyn's progress in some way.

A few days later we received another email from LWB, stating that they had dug further and found more information in their records about Maelyn. Apparently, she was part of their 2009 cleft project -- and they had records and pictures of her lip surgery. We were blown away!! In April of 2009, Maelyn made the journey from her orphanage to Shanghai and spent a few days in the hospital with LWB volunteers.

We received records of the surgery and even pictures of the doctors who performed the surgery. The project was one where U.S. doctors had gone to China to help teach the doctors new techniques for fixing cleft lips and palates.

The following are pictures of Maelyn's lip surgery...

What a precious, precious gift....