The legal papers included a stunning admission: the wife was not the baby's genetic mother -- they'd used an anonymous egg donor.

The case had now become very complicated. The lawyers were still negotiating about who would be the legal parents when the baby was born June 25.

She was full-term and six pounds nine ounces, but she wasn't breathing. Her body was limp and blue. Her heart rate was dangerously low.

The pediatricians pumped oxygen into her tiny lungs, and in about 20 seconds her heart rate went up to normal. She breathed on her own. Her color normalized.

"Infant appears to be moving all extremities and crying appropriately," the medical record stated.

Kelley's name went on the birth certificate. Kelley said she left the space for the father's name blank.

Three weeks later, the two sides struck a deal: The father agreed to give up his paternal rights as long as he and his wife could keep in touch with the adoptive family about the baby's health. Since then, the couple has visited the baby. The father has held her.

"They do care about her well-being. They do care about how she's doing," the adoptive mother said.

A long list of med problems -- and an infectious smile

The baby's medical problems turned out to be much more extensive than the ultrasound at Hartford Hospital had revealed.

She has a birth defect called holoprosencephaly, where the brain fails to completely divide into distinct hemispheres. She has heterotaxy, which means many of her internal organs, such as her liver and stomach, are in the wrong places. She has at least two spleens, neither of which works properly. Her head is very small, her right ear is misshapen, she has a cleft lip and a cleft palate, and a long list of complex heart defects, among other problems.

Baby S. -- her adoptive parents are comfortable using her first initial -- has a long road in front of her. She's already had one open-heart surgery and surgery on her intestines, and in the next year she'll need one or two more cardiac surgeries in addition to procedures to repair her cleft lip and palate. Later in childhood she'll need surgeries on her jaw and ear and more heart surgeries.

Her adoptive parents, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their family's privacy, know Baby S. might not be with them for long. The cardiac procedures she needs are risky, and her heterotaxy and holoprosencephaly, though mild, carry a risk of early death, according to doctors.

If Baby S. does survive, there's a 50% chance she won't be able to walk, talk or use her hands normally.

In some ways, Baby S. looks different from other 8-month-olds babies. In addition to the facial abnormalities, she's very small, weighing only 11 pounds and she gets food through a tube directly into her stomach so she'll grow faster.

Her adoptive parents know some people look at her and see a baby born to suffer -- a baby who's suffering could have been prevented with an abortion.

But that's not the way they see it. They see a little girl who's defied the odds, who constantly surprises her doctors with what she's able to do -- make eye contact, giggle at her siblings, grab toys, eye strangers warily.

"S. wakes up every single morning with an infectious smile. She greets her world with a constant sense of enthusiasm," her mother said in an e-mail to CNN. "Ultimately, we hold onto a faith that in providing S. with love, opportunity, encouragement, she will be the one to show us what is possible for her life and what she is capable of achieving."

Savior or Satan?

Just as there are two ways to look at Baby S., there are two ways to look at Crystal Kelley, the woman who carried her.

In one view, she's a saint who fought at great personal sacrifice for an unborn child whose own parents did not want her to live. In another view, she recklessly absconded with someone else's child and brought into the world a baby who faces serious medical challenges when that wasn't her decision to make.

Kelley knows some people hate her.

She's blogged about Baby S., and many readers, especially other surrogates, have attacked her.

"I can't tell you how many people told me that I was bad, that I was wrong, that I should go have an abortion, that I would be damned to hell," she said.

In the end, she feels like she did the right thing.