Couple Adopts Abandoned Girl Born With Strange Blue Eyes. What Happens Next Will Make You Cry

When Primrose is adopted from a cruel Chinese orphanage after being abandoned by her parents, a terrible truth emerges about her strange blue eyes, and suddenly a decision has to be made that could save her life but will break your heart.

In China, many people prefer baby boys over baby girls, and this preference is heartbreakingly clear at the welfare centers across the country. When Primrose Austin was born, she was left on the doorstep of one of these institutions, but she wasn’t anything like the other baby girls. In fact, she had the most unusual blue eyes. They were extraordinarily large with powder blue irises and almost no pupils, and she was almost blind. She was beautiful, but the mere fact that she was different meant she would be destined to die in the institution, probably before she turned five.

Primrose was placed in crib number three in a room with rusted carts lining the walls. There were almost 50 babies in this one room alone, and they were eerily quiet. None of them cried; none of them interacted with the world. They had never experienced human warmth or a loving touch and expected nothing from the world. In their first weeks of life, these babies had learned that crying was of no use because nobody would come for them.

Primrose’s future was bleak, to say the least. She got none of the medical care an infant needs. Her food was insufficient, and contact with human beings was virtually nonexistent. Her nappy went unchanged for hours at a time, and she was fed no more than once a day. Already at the age of a few weeks, Primrose was severely undernourished. She wouldn’t last long. She was destined to become another infant fatality, a baby girl left to her own devices in a country that didn’t want her, not because of who she was, but because she was a girl and because she had the most mesmerizing and unnatural blue eyes. That is, unless someone decided she was worth rescuing.

Halfway across the world, Erin and Chris Austin had been married for a while. They were a pair like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Friends who observed them called their relationship a unique dance. When they were together, they heard music that others were oblivious to. On the first day they had connected, as soon as Chris had touched the topic of children, “I don’t want my own kids,” he had said. “I want kids, but I want to adopt too. Too many kids have to grow up without proper love. I want to give them mine.”

“You had me at adopt,” Erin said, and from there the conversation blossomed. Before they knew it, they were talking about their dreams and sharing intimate details about their lives. By 2 AM, the manager had asked them to leave. They went back to Chris’s place, and the conversation continued until the sun came up.

After being inseparable for nine months, Erin and Chris eloped. They took a flight to Maui, got married at the Old Wailuku Inn, spent two marvelous weeks in Hawaii, and returned to their daily lives in the United States. It took them two months to break the news to family and friends that they had tied the knot.

After six years of marriage, Erin touched on the adoption conversation that had set everything in motion for them. She felt they were ready to grow their family, and adoption was still the only option for her. She shared Chris’s belief that they could give oodles of love to a child who may otherwise grow up knowing nothing about kindness and care. In a way, adopting a baby felt like her destiny.

When she touched on the subject, Chris’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been wanting us to talk about that again,” he said, “but I was waiting for the right time.” He took her out to dinner that night with candles on the table and champagne in an ice bucket. They spoke about what they wanted from an adoption.

“A girl,” Chris said. “Definitely a girl.”

Erin got lost in her own thoughts for a moment. When she looked up, she had a strange look in her eyes. “I know exactly where we can find the perfect baby.” She rummaged through her bag and produced her cell phone. After a few taps, she found what she was looking for. She held the phone out to him, and he started reading the article she’d opened.

“It’s about orphan girls in China,” Chris, she said. She told him the story faster than he could read it. Erin explained the horrific conditions these orphans had to endure, how they were completely starved of love and human touch, how the mortality rate for girls in some of the orphanages in China was almost 90%. She didn’t have to exaggerate; it was all in the article Chris was reading. And as he looked at it, she could see how deeply the distress of those baby girls was touching him.

“Kids belong in families,” Erin said. “That’s where they’re nurtured. They don’t belong in cribs lining walls.”

“You’re right,” he said, handing the phone back to her. Chris’s eyes had watered up. “We’re not looking any further. Let’s get out of here. I want to start looking at websites as soon as possible. Tonight still. Come on.”

At exactly 10 PM that evening, Chris and Erin’s hearts were simultaneously captured by a single photo. It was a little girl the orphanage had named Primrose. Her bright eyes shone through the laptop screen and ignited a love in Chris and Erin that knew no bounds. She was more than just a child in need; she was the missing piece of their family.

The one thing Erin loved most of all about Chris was the speed at which he operated once he’d made up his mind about something. He became one-track minded like a giant locomotive. He simply shoved obstacles out of his way to achieve his goals. It was like this throughout the adoption process. Unlike other countries in the region, China was open to putting orphans up for international adoption, but being a communist country, there was the inevitable bureaucracy. This was what frustrated Chris most about the process. With other issues that arose in their lives, he could quickly employ a combination of deadly charm, razor-sharp wit, well-crafted arguments, and devilish persistence to make things happen. But in the face of Chinese bureaucracy, he was helpless.

As the weeks passed, Erin watched him rack his brain, not believing there wasn’t some kind of plan they could devise to speed things up. But there wasn’t. It was one giant lesson in patience.

Erin was alone at home when the message came through that the adoption had been approved. Chris was out of town on a fishing expedition. She tried frantically to get a hold of him but to no avail. His phone went through to voicemail. It was clearly off. She’d had to wait until he returned to tell him, and it was going to be the hardest two days of her life. She spent her time organizing their Chinese visas, arranging flights, booking hotels, and making sure the orphanage would be ready for them when they arrived.

On the day Chris was coming back, she made dinner and laid the table, complete with candles and flowers. When she was sure everything was ready, she had a bath and waited with bated breath. When Chris walked through the door, she immediately said, “We’re going to China, Chris.”

His eyes shot full of tears. Erin smiled. “I got the call two days ago. The tickets are booked, the fees are done, the hotels are arranged, the orphanage is expecting us. We’re flying tomorrow afternoon.”

Four days later in Beijing, Chris and Erin were shocked when Primrose was placed in Erin’s arms. The infant was severely malnourished, something anybody could see, but the matron of the orphanage ignored the fact. She was unlike any child of her age that they had seen. She didn’t interact and seemed indifferent about their presence. She hardly responded to touch and made virtually no eye contact. The matron told them, matter-of-factly, that the infant was almost blind.

It was as if Primrose didn’t dare accept the fact that the love and attention she was getting could possibly last, so it was better simply not to buy into it. It was going to disappear anyway.

From the moment they drove away from the orphanage with Primrose in their arms, Chris and Erin silently committed to giving her the best life any kid could ever have wanted. Back home in the United States, their first stop was a pediatrician.

Even he was shocked at the condition she was in. Methodically, he ran tests, studied the results, and ran some more tests. In the end, the prognosis wasn’t promising. Primrose was developmentally stunted. This was simply because of a lack of human attention, and her eyes were a problem. The test results that would indicate the route forward were only due in a few days, so he suggested they take her home and smother her with as much love as they could.

“If she’s going to respond to anything at this stage, it is to constant, unwavering love,” he said.

Over the next few days, Chris and Erin started understanding exactly how desperate Primrose’s life in the orphanage had been. She didn’t know how to swallow solid food, she had no idea what play was, she hardly made a sound, and the concept of warmth and affection was entirely foreign to the infant. But with deep love and patience, they started showing her that the world could be a lot friendlier than what she had been used to.

Back at the doctor, the news wasn’t good. “She has a rare condition called 6p25 deletion syndrome,” the doctor said. “It’s a long name, but it simply means a small part of her DNA is missing.”

“What does that mean?” Erin asked.

“It will cause a range of health issues as time goes by,” the doctor said, “but right now,

it’s her eyes I’m worried about. The condition is causing a huge amount of pressure to build up behind her eyes, and the detachment of her retina is making every day a struggle for her. You say she doesn’t cry at all?”

The parents shook their heads.

The doctor took Primrose in his arms and said, “Babies cry because it’s the only way they can communicate. If they are simply ignored, they eventually stop crying because they understand that their needs won’t be fulfilled and that crying is futile.”

“Is she in pain?” Chris asked.

The doctor was quiet for a few moments, then he said, “I think this child has known more pain in a few short months than most people get to know in a lifetime, but unfortunately, it’s not over.”

The news was worse than the couple expected. Those bright, blazing eyes that had first captured their hearts would have to be removed. She was close to completely blind as it was, so her life wouldn’t change drastically, except for the pain that would be gone. This was the most heartbreaking decision Chris and Erin had ever had to make, but they were determined to do what was best for Primrose. Their baby was in pain, and there was no chance of it getting any better. Besides, even without the little eyesight she had left, her light would continue to shine, and she would continue to bring joy to everyone she met.

A few months after the surgery, Primrose started improving with each passing day. She was finally pain-free and blossoming into a vibrant little girl. She seemed to be understanding that the love she was getting was here to stay. She got new eye implants, painted with delicate irises and pupils, which restored a sense of normalcy to her appearance.

Today, Erin and Chris are filled with hope for their daughter’s future. They envision a life where she’s not only independent but thriving, overcoming every obstacle with the same resilience she’s shown since the day they met her. Erin shares a powerful message with the world today: “Determination and fear go together on this journey. We were committed to doing the hard things because they matter more than the comfortable things. All kinds of sadness and happiness are woven together in Primrose’s story, just like in life. The best thing of all is that she found her family, one that would move mountains to ensure her happiness even in the face of heartbreaking decisions.”

Would you be able to make the difficult decision Chris and Erin had to make? And would you ever adopt a child from a country with such different beliefs?