Happiness Goosebumps

My little sister Anna is pregnant with her third, and just today found out the best news: they're having a little girl, and she won't be cleft-affected! Her two older brothers, the handsomest Jimmy and Johnny, were both born with cleft lips and palettes. Thus there is clearly a genetic predisposition (though neither side of the family knows of any clefts in its history), and therefore Anna and Jim have been preparing themselves for the possibility that this baby, too, would be cleft-affected.

Anna wrote some beautiful posts in her own blog about her fears, hopes, and now happiness (see this, and this, and this, for example). These lines especially touched me:

When James and I began trying to conceive this summer, we had come to the point where we knew our chances of our third child being born with a cleft were high (given our track record). We made this baby in spite of those odds. We have always felt while a cleft would not be something we would choose for our child, but, if that is the only way our children will be born to us, we would receive them with open and grateful arms nonetheless. We feel very blessed to have Jimmy and Johnny in our lives. The journey has been long and hard, but we have 2 beautiful, loving, thoughtful boys, and so much to be grateful for.

One of the hard things about cleft is that there aren't a lot of answers in the medical field yet. Doctors have explained that most of it is genetic, but that environmental factors could trigger the cleft. So Anna has felt so much stress over doing everything just right: if she walks by someone smoking, she worries she's triggered a cleft.

And yet she's had horrible nausea this time around, and really not been able to eat as well as she wants or be her full self. So I'm so relieved for her: if the baby could put up with all her barfing, and not have a cleft, clearly Jimmy and Johnny's clefts were simple genetics, and not something triggered environmentally. It's not her fault!

Anyway: I am just so happy for her. Her little girl is going to be so loved by her strong, handsome, gentle, kind older brothers -- boys who are tender and thoughtful because they've had to endure more pain than many. I'm so excited to meet this little princess!