Signs by Elle Metz Walters

God came in the form of Paw Patrol. A big Chase the dog decal on the wall of my daughter’s recovery room. Her tiny form lay bundled in blankets. A baby in a hospital bed is an absurd and heartbreaking sight. As I settled myself in a chair to feed her breast milk through a syringe, I looked up and was confronted by Chase’s smiling cartoon face. A few weeks prior, I would have had no idea who this dog was, but my son had received a Paw Patrol puzzle for Christmas and subsequently fallen in love with a few books at the library. Now I knew all the Patrol pups’ names. And something else I knew in the instant Chase and I locked eyes was this was a sign from God. He comes to us in unusual ways.

My daughter was born with a cleft lip and palate. We received the diagnosis at our twenty week scan. Affecting 1 in 1,600 babies, a cleft occurs when the lip and palate don’t form normally. A hiccup of Mother Nature, as one nurse put it to me. My husband and I were blindsided. Once the doctor told us, she explained a little about clefts and listed a litany of potential associated syndromes. Tears slid down my cheeks and beneath my mask. I asked if the cleft caused pain. Blessedly, the answer was no.

We submitted a blood test to determine the chance of any other syndromes or conditions. I cried as they slipped a needle under my skin. I cried into my husband’s chest outside the hospital. I cried calling my mom while driving home. The tears began and didn’t stop for weeks, slipping out beyond my control. But as they flowed, so did the signs.

The first occurred just a few days after we received the diagnosis. At our local farmer’s market, we noticed a woman with a bright shirt reading “Talk to me, I’m an SLP.” A speech language pathologist. From our research, we knew our daughter would likely need to work with an SLP for any feeding or speech hurdles. We approached this friendly, forward woman and told her about our daughter’s diagnosis. She said she’d worked with kids with clefts. She looked at us, her eyes traveling over my husband, our toddler son and me, and said she could tell, we would be fine.

One day, a few weeks later, I sat in the corner of our family room in a leather chair. It was a Saturday. My son was napping. I was listening to music and my favorite song came on — Iron & Wine’s “The Trapeze Swinger.” It’s soft, meandering nature has always enchanted me. I walked down the aisle to it. And as I listened, a line that I’d long known but paid no real attention to gripped me: “Tell my mother not to worry.” A chill. It was God admonishing — oh thee of little faith. The tears came again, but for the first time they were not of fear but of gratitude. Maybe things would be ok.

The signs kept coming.

One Sunday after Mass, standing outside church, the priest, unbidden, strode across the concrete expanse to me. I forget now the specifics of the exchange but he sought me out to bless my pregnant belly, knowing nothing of our situation.

Receiving a prenatal massage, the therapist told me, also knowing nothing of my daughter’s cleft, that I was the exact right mother for my child. That I had been chosen.

We interviewed one of the most popular cleft surgeons in the area, and he was more jarringly arrogant than helpful. But he did, at the very end of the meeting, drop the name of another surgeon. One we’d never heard of in our research. We interviewed this man, subsequently finding out he’s one of the most talented, experienced cleft surgeons in the country, and after meeting with him, knew unequivocally he was the one to operate on our daughter. More than for his experience, we chose him because of the feeling we had while speaking with him — an unexplained peace. God in the room with us.

As we waited for her arrival, as we waited to see if she would be healthy, as I drifted in an ocean of anxiety, I clung to these signs.

Writing these words now, I’m tempted to edit them. To temper them. Because our daughter is here now, and she is perfect. She was perfect with her cleft and she’s perfect after four surgeries to address the structural differences of her face — because that is all they are. When she was a newborn, I would marvel at her uniqueness, at how her cells stopped dividing and connecting before they were supposed to. And yet, so many of the parts were all still there. Like puzzle pieces not quite connected.

Another sign: I prayed that her two-year-old brother would understand her facial differences. He never even noticed them. All he saw — all we all saw — was a baby sister he couldn’t wait to hold. “Take her out,” he said when we first set her carseat down in our house.

All this being true, we had a hell of a time. Throughout my daughter’s first year, our joy was continuous, but its constant companions were hypervigilance, fear, stress, anger and sadness. There were nights sobbing in the kitchen. There were near panic attacks.

After all, someone must be desperate to see God in a giant cartoon dog decal. Right?

Maybe so. Or maybe they are simply more receptive to the universe. Maybe the signs are always there, we just need to be vulnerable enough to see them for what they are — God’s little assurances.

I think, like everything in life, it comes down to our choice. As my son says, “maybe yes, maybe no.” I choose yes.

The greatest sign is not a sign at all, but an answered prayer. My daughter. Her joyful, willful spirit. How she hugs you with her whole body, smiling as she curls into your shoulder. Her utter disregard for the hardships of her first year. She mastered her special bottle a mere hour after being born, right there in the delivery room. After her second surgery, she was back to herself within 24 hours. These days, she dances at every opportunity. She is stronger even than I prayed for — only God could imagine a being such as her.

She underwent her third surgery just before turning one. When it was over, a hospital attendant led us to her recovery bed. She had already awoken from anesthesia and was panicked for food, swollen and bloody, hooked up to wires and tubes. I held her. Tried to feed her as she yelled and cried. As I cried. Finally, she fell asleep. I looked across the dim room and the light of a computer screen caught my eye. The time read 11:11. A time many think is lucky, but is particularly so for my daughter — it’s her birthday.

Elle Metz Walters is a mama, writer, photographer, and member of Smile Train’s Cleft Community Advisory Council. She lives outside Chicago with her husband and three children.