Hi Everyone,
On Monday I arrived in Nanchang and received Allison. I wish I could say it was one of those idyllic Hallmark moments with angels parting the heavens and singing the praises of motherhood but I'm afraid it was the "gotcha day" from hell! Now, let me say from the outset that I had no expectations that today would be a bed of roses. I had read enough to know that gotcha day is often traumatic for children and that they may respond to this trauma in a variety of ways. But I was really taken aback by the sheer intensity and duration of my daughter's distress, which was compounded by our arriving late in Nanchang.
If you read my previous entry you know that the snowstorm in Beijing caused our Sunday evening flight to Nanchang to be cancelled so we had to catch the early bird flight the next day. Our wake up call was for 5:00 a.m. When we got to Nanchang, our new guide, Mary, told us that we would be getting our babies shortly after we got to the hotel, and she wasn't kidding. We were led to our rooms and literally had 15 minutes to get settled before going down to the lobby to get our children. I had no time to unpack my baby items, make up a bottle, or get ready for the child. We were told we'd be doing paperwork that afternoon at Civil Affairs so I had to use my precious 15 minutes to assemble gift bags for the officials. I was rushing as fast as I could and had not even gotten the gift bags together when I got a phone call asking me to come down to the lobby right away as the babies were waiting.
Well, as you can probably surmise from the title of this message, Allison was NOT a happy camper. She was crying really hard, and pretty much screamed and cried non-stop for the rest of the day. She was not at all happy about the sudden change in her life circumstances and wanted everyone to know it. This child has a set of lungs on her that would put any professional wind player to shame! I took her back to my hotel room to try to calm her down. I was holding this thrashing, hysterical child while trying to fish through my luggage one-handed to pull out bottles, formula, diapers, etc. It suddenly dawned on me that I had not read the instructions on how to prepare the formula so there I was with my crying child trying to figure out how many scoops to put in the bottle. It was just AWFUL! Sensing that I might be a bit overwhelmed, Mary followed me back to my room to help. After a lot of awkward fumbling around, I finally got the bottle ready but Allison was too upset to drink it. Mary decided to give it a try and rattled off a string of words to Allison in Chinese trying to coax her to take it but she just cried even more.
In the midst of this melee, Mary mentioned to me that the orphanage had noticed that Allison had a palpable lump under her chin. I felt it and thought that maybe it was a swollen gland from a recent infection but Mary told me that it had been there for two months. They didn't know what it was. Allison had not been examined by a doctor and, to the best of their knowledge, had not had any recent infections. Great. Not only was my child traumatized, she had an unknown medical issue. As I was standing there trying to figure out what to do about this unexpected development, Mary asked me if I wanted to have a Chinese pediatrician come to the hotel later that evening and examine Allison. I decided to do that and told her yes. Just before she left the hotel room, Mary told me that we would be doing our adoption paperwork at Civil Affairs and to be ready at 1:30 p.m. She told me to stop at the hotel restaurant and have lunch beforehand. Well, I wasn't about to take a hysterical, screaming child to a restaurant. What ambiance for the other restaurant patrons! Needless to say, there was no lunch. I didn't even have a chance to use the restroom.
When Mary left my room, I managed to get Allison to fall asleep briefly. She was completely exhausted. But I had to wake her up fifteen minutes later so we could leave for Civil Affairs. This certainly didn't help her mood. She screamed and cried the entire afternoon, through all of the appointments. When we had to take the family photo for her Chinese paperwork, some other adoptive parents had to stand behind the camera and make faces, sing songs and clap to try to get her to stop crying long enough to snap the picture. (Did I mention that the other babies at the Civil Affairs office acting like complete angels? Much to the delight of their new parents, they were being all cute and charming.) I had to write a statement on one of the forms saying why I wanted to adopt but I barely remember what I said. It's all a blur. During one interview I was asked if I was satisfied with my child. I numbly replied yes. The absurdity of this question only occurred to me later. There had not been adequate time to really assess my child. In her heightened state of distress it was impossible to ascertain her true physical and emotional health.
While I was being interviewed and paying my fees, some of the nannies from Allison's orphanage tried to play with her and get her to take a bottle. She cried and screamed even for them and still wouldn't eat anything. They later told our guide that Allison had cried for the entire three-hour trip from the orphanage to Nanchang. At one point, we were supposed to present our gifts for the various officials. In the confusion, I had brought the wrong number. We made do but it was embarrassing.
As we left the civil affairs office, the stress of the day overwhelmed me. I couldn't hold back the tears. I was totally exhausted from the early morning flight, starving, needed to use the restroom badly, and Allison was still screaming bloody murder. I was especially frustrated that we hadn't even had an hour to get settled in our hotel rooms before receiving the children. The other adoptive parents felt bad for me and tried to help. Once we got back to the hotel, one of the other adoptive moms came to my room to try to help. She quickly identified one possible source of Allison's extreme discomfort - teething. Her gums were red and swollen and you could feel several teeth coming in. We got out the Baby Orajel and the infant Tylenol and that seemed to help a little bit.
Later that night, the Chinese doctor came to my hotel room to examine the lump under Allison's chin. She was U.S. trained and worked in the pediatric intensive care unit at the local children's hospital. She said it was most likely a lymph node that became enlarged after an infection or a salivary gland blockage. She didn't think it was serious and thought that it was safe to wait until I got home to have her seen by a doctor in the U.S. Allison didn't have any fever or other signs of a current infection. While she was there the pediatrician did an examination of my daughter's level of development. She expressed skepticism at her given age, noting that her size and development was more consistent with that of a much younger child. She is quite tiny for a fourteen month old and is drowning in her 18 month-old clothing. One of the other babies from her orphanage, who is supposed to be three months younger, is actually bigger than Allison. Neither of these girls are sitting up by themselves, crawling or walking.
After the doctor left, I decided to put Allison in the stroller and walk the halls of the hotel to see if I could get her to sleep for the night. The motion of the stroller was about the only thing that seemed to sooth her. After about an hour of walking up and down, she finally crashed. I let her sleep in the stroller for the night. I wasn't about to try to move her. Thankfully, she slept through the night.
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