Sichuan Mother Refuses to Give Up on 2 Daughters With Cerebral Palsy

When relatives urged He Yuhua to send her daughters away, she answered with a question.

"I carried them for 10 months. They kicked me from inside, and my blood runs in them," she told Cover News. "If even I don't want them, who in this world will?"

Both of her daughters were diagnosed with cerebral palsy as infants. For more than 20 years since, He has looked after them almost single-handedly at the family home in Wujiaci Village, Sichuan Province.

When a Cover News reporter visited on October 27, He, her hair tied back loosely and wearing a faded blue jacket with neatly rolled cuffs, came out to greet the visitor with her younger daughter in her arms.

Shortly after her elder daughter was born, He noticed the baby could not lift her head or roll over. Visits to several hospitals ended in the same diagnosis. A few years later, her second daughter was diagnosed with the same condition.

He said she cried for days and lost so much weight she could barely walk straight. Some well-meaning people told her to stop trying and spare herself a lifetime of hardship; some relatives called the girls a lifelong burden and suggested giving them up. She refused.

Her days now follow a fixed routine. She gets up before dawn to turn both daughters, change their diapers and wash them. Every meal is fed by hand, one spoonful at a time, and by the time both are done her own food has gone cold. At night she rises about every two hours to shift their sleeping positions and check their breathing.

Medicine takes longer still. The younger daughter has trouble swallowing, so half of each spoonful often runs out of the corner of her mouth. He wipes it away and tries again. A small bowl can take more than 10 minutes.

"What's troublesome about that? She's my child," He said. "Every extra mouthful she takes makes me happy."

The elder daughter recently turned 26. Her father, who works in the city of Jianyang, came home for a small family celebration. She cannot speak, but her eyes followed her family around the room and she smiled, according to the report.

Around that time, a relative suggested that since the daughters were grown, they could move to a care facility to ease He's load. The idea brought her to tears.

"I've looked after her for more than 20 years, every single day. She is my life," she said. "If she were sent away, could I sleep at night? If she cried over there, I wouldn't even know."

Asked what will happen when she is too old to cope, He has no grand plan. "We take it one day at a time," she said. "As long as I can still move, I'll look after them myself."

Village officials told Cover News that the family receives minimum living allowance and disability subsidies, and a charity group visits regularly. Still, most of the daily hands-on care falls to He alone. When asked whether she needs anything, she usually smiles and says the family is "getting by."

She rarely travels farther than the town market for groceries. At village weddings and funerals, she hands over her gift money and hurries home. Between caring for her daughters, she farms and raises chickens and ducks.

The girls cannot talk or run, but He says they know her. When she calls softly, they smile back, and when she sits on the doorstep to rest after work, their eyes follow her.