Sinja´s been fostered by us since she was 4 months old. Although she was born only 2 weeks early her birth weight was only 1600 grms, due to FAS, she also had a cleft palate and an infection throughout her whole body. She was put on a respirator for the first few days and it was touch and go as to if she would survive at all.

On the Thur. 12th Jan .89 we had a call from our social worker saying and I quote "Mrs Gibson we´ve got an alcohol damaged baby in the hospital and if you don´t take her she has to go into a childrens home on Monday!!" We said yes straight away and off we went to see our new addition. The doctor at the hospital tried to persuade us for 1 hour not to take her but we were determined that this ( to us) beautiful baby wasn´t going to be put into an institution. We had to learn how to insert her feeding tube through her nose into her stomach (She didn´t like that one bit) and after a few days we brought her home. Don´t need to say what the first few months was like it´s in the poem Alcohol, apart from to say "Hell" she never stopped screaming!

Despite the dire prognosis of the doctors ( which we ignored!) Sinja did learn to walk at 20 months and did learn to speak at 3. She´s had 3 operations on her cleft palate and has been having speech therapy for years. She gets very frustrated when people can´t understand what she´s saying.

Sinja´s now 10 and really turned into a very loving, very active child. She attends a " special needs class" in a Danish school ( we are an English family living in Germany) near the Danish border. Which means she´s had to learn Danish ( no problem ) and she understands most English. The older she gets the more she has begun to notice her own disabilities, she gets annoyed that her sister Ebi who´s 8 and started at the same school ( but in a mainstream class )1 year after her can read and write and do maths much better than she can. She´s much less Hyper than she used to be ( or maybe we´ve just got used to it ! ) but she spends most of her time outdoors with her pony and runs most of her energy off.

We´re having great success for the last year with growth hormone therapy which thank God has caused no side effects ( except to make Sinja happy that she´s grown 10 cm in 1 year!! ) and her self esteem has gone up with every centimeter. She´s now 10 and 127 cm. We all love Sinja to bits, and hope that one day she´ll be able to hold down her dream job of looking after animals. Here´s Hoping, Praying and Fighting for her rights!!!

Sinja as a teenager, about age 17