Child History 5.0

Each child comes with their own unique story:
heart breaking, tragic, with conflicting details, many unknowns and doubts...or all of the above. Here's the particularly difficult story of one.

Eliana had an unimaginably rough start to life. She was born several hours outside the city in a poor rural area. As with many or most of our babies, her mother was the victim of rape, but with the awful twist that her older brother was the perpetrator. She had to hide her pregnancy and then the birth of baby Eliana under threats of death or injury from the brother/father.

When Eliana was still a small baby, her mother was taking her out to drown her in the river when her father (Eliana’ grandfather) discovered her. At that point, authorities were notified, Eliana was hospitalized with severe malnutrition and other illnesses, and Eliana’ family was scattered: her mother went into hiding for her own protection, her father ran away and when caught was put in jail (although he has since escaped), the grandfather ran away to avoid receiving punished from the community for such a disgraceful family, and the grandmother was left to sort through the mess and get another son out of jail on drug charges (drugs supposedly planted in his car by Eliana's father as manipulation to keep the brother silent on what had happened...although who knows what the real story is).

Although Eliana arrived to us straight from the hospital, she was in a very poor state of health, weighing just 11 pounds. At times we even had her isolated because she had such bad infections. But how she has recovered nutritionally! At 18 months she weighed in at 24 pounds.

Despite her tragic past, even when a sickly baby Eliana has always been one of our brightest, sunniest babies…as well as noisiest! She loves to joke and play and is a busy, active toddler.

There's been some concern that she might have kidney issues because of repeated UTIs, but a sonogram showed all to be fine, at least externally. All year she's been very healthy and so we've elected to not do further [expensive and invasive] exams for now. (Unless you count in violent vomiting when she's in the car for too long!! She's our first who definitely gets car sick, and these roads are anything but smooth.)


At one point my family and I took a road trip to personally pick up an important report from the Child Defense that "rescued" Eliana. Long story short, I did not obtain that report. Still, after much effort and more delays than I'd care to recall, Eliana's papers are being processed in court so that she will someday have a loving adoptive family.

Pictures, top to bottom:

1) January 2009 (I love this dress on her!)
2) My sister Emma holding Eliana her first days with us (when we adopted Emma from Russia, she was in the same condition as Eliana: 11 pounds at 8 1/2 months)
3) Just TWO months after her arrival and already a new baby!
4) Always a drama queen!!


*name has been changed

Help provide loving care for Eliana for just $25/month through Casa de Amor's new child sponsorship program. Download THIS form to start!