When Christian Buchanan was born, the delivery room suddenly became quiet.
His mother, Lacey, immediately knew something was different.
During pregnancy, doctors had detected a severe cleft lip and palate, but they couldn’t fully explain what they were seeing on the scans.
When Christian arrived in February 2011, the reality was far more complex.
He had an extremely rare Tessier facial cleft. His eyes had never developed, leaving him completely blind.
Lacey later recalled that medical staff quietly asked whether she wanted to see her baby.
She did.

And despite the shock of everything happening around her, she saw her son.
At only four days old, Christian underwent his first surgery to place a feeding tube because the severe cleft made normal feeding impossible. He spent his first month in intensive neonatal care and would face many more surgeries as he grew.
The beginning was overwhelming for his parents.
They had to learn how to care for a blind baby with extensive medical needs while also dealing with strangers staring, whispering and sometimes making cruel comments about Christian’s appearance.
The pressure even placed enormous strain on Lacey and her husband Chris, who later admitted there were periods when their marriage nearly fell apart.
But Christian kept growing.
And his personality began changing the way people saw him.
He learned to walk and talk, attended the Tennessee School for the Blind and began learning Braille. He also took karate classes, where his instructor adapted movements so he could learn through touch and repetition.
Later, he even began learning to play the violin.
Lacey eventually started sharing Christian’s life publicly because she wanted people to see more than his facial difference.
Not simply a child born without eyes.
A curious boy who laughed, learned, played with his younger brother and found his own way of understanding the world.
The condition changed almost everything about how Christian experiences life.
It never determined how much life he could experience.
If you were raising a child who looked noticeably different, would you protect them from the world’s attention or teach the world how to see them differently?