What a long strange trip it's been

It has been a rough few days.

While applying for the children’s Chinese passport (as mentioned at the end of my last post), it was discovered that one of the children had some Chickenpox blisters. That child had to be quarantined and all of the children had to have immunizations and more physical exams. At one point, the passports of the families and the visas of the children were flagged to bar entry into the United States. Thanks to some hard work by the American Consulate negotiating with the CDC in Atlanta on our behalf, we were able to leave China as scheduled. It did cost us two days of worry, going to meetings, waiting for calls, and physical exams, so our plans for souvenir shopping and visits to the pearl and electronics markets on those days had to be curtailed.

Just because we managed to leave China on schedule doesn’t mean we got home as planned. We flew from the world’s best airport in Hong Kong to America’s sorriest, Newark, and stayed overnight at the Marriott there. The next morning, we flew to Houston and connected to a 17-hour flight from there to NW Arkansas Regional (XNA). Yes, friends, on this particular day it took us longer to get from Houston to Bentonville than it took us to get from Newark to Hong Kong two weeks earlier. Because of fog we ended up circling XNA on four different occasions, with diverted landings for fuel in Tulsa, Houston (which included “sleeping” in the airport), and Oklahoma City before making it home to, as the song says, “patch our bones”. The whole family went to bed the afternoon we returned, slept for about 12 hours, got up around 3 a.m. to eat, feed, change, and then slept some more.

For our efforts baby Bei now has a head cold complete with ear infection. Today, we took her to the doctor today for her fourth physical exam in two weeks. But of course, the American version is much more thorough, including a plethora of lab tests and follow up physical and speech therapy (the speech therapy is for her oral issues as she still won’t allow anything but the bottle in her mouth). The pediatrician puts her physical age at about 10 months although the Chinese authorities have her at 14 months. The doc says it is common for babies in orphanages to lose a month’s worth of development for each 3 months they are institutionalized, so that does match the Chinese story. We should know for sure as her development “catches up” over the next few months.

I have no pictures to share at the moment as we are still disorganized in mind and household. I have a hundred stories to tell and I will post them when I can. For now, we will work on getting our lives back in order and ridding ourselves of scabies (ewww!)

Gotcha!

First (and most important) things first… our baby is with us and she is happy and reasonably healthy.

The pictures above are from Monday, which some call “Gotcha Day”, which is the day you meet your baby for the first time. These photos were taken within seconds of Bei being placed in our arms for the first time.

The timing of this process seems to change at random. We were expecting to meet our baby on Tuesday but we were told when we arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday night that we would have her on Monday. We were running late by the time we got to Guangzhou because of the bus ride from Hong Kong (a story for another time) so we had 45 minutes to unpack, settle, feed the family, and gather what we needed to take with us to the Department of Civil Affairs of Guangdong Province. Anyplace that was quick to eat didn’t accept Hong Kong dollars or American dollars and … well… another story for another time. Let’s just say when we met Bei there was no shortage of emotion, anxiety, fatigue, or hunger. Yet when we met each other it all washed away.

Because of the advice we’ve gotten and the books we’ve read, we were prepared for rejection or some manifestation of an attachment issue, but we experienced no such problem. She was happy to be held and comfortable and loving with the boys and us. We took turns holding her, talking to her, and making her smile. After a while she fell asleep in my arms and stayed asleep until it was time to go. She laid contently in the lap of her youngest big brother on the roller-coaster/bus ride back to the hotel.

Our baby is tiny. Supposedly 14 months old, I don’t think she weighs more than 15 pounds. Unlike some of the other babies of her age in our group, she doesn’t really crawl very well and cannot stand, even with assistance. She is so small that we gave her a bath in the bathroom sink of our hotel room.

We are having some trouble getting her to eat. The first day she rejected any form of food we offered her and we finally got her to drink 4 ounces of Chinese formula yesterday morning. Our guide suggested we give her some “Children’s tea” yesterday afternoon, which she did drink, but repeated attempts with Chinese formula, American formula, baby food, Chinese congee (rice porridge), American rice cereal, noodles, and even just water to keep her hydrated failed miserably. This morning she drank about 6 ounces of Chinese formula, but immediately spit up a good portion of it.

One of the fathers in our group had heard that some orphanages will give babies something to constipate them before a long bus ride on Gotcha Day so the nannies don’t have to deal with changing poopy diapers while they are on the road. I really think this is the case based on what I’ve heard from some of the other families and the fact that Bei’s orphanage in Huazhou is seven hours away by bus. She drank a little over 2 ounces of Children’s tea after breakfast and we treated her with some glycerin we had brought from the states and that has made things better on both ends. As I’ve typed this last paragraph she has drank four ounces of Chinese formula.

This afternoon we will take the bus to the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department to get Bei’s Chinese Passport.

The shortest distance between two points

It’s go time.

We spent the day packing, running some last-minute errands, and a saying a few farewells. I must say that K-Mom did most of the heavy lifting here… my role is clearly a support function.

One of the reasons we chose our adoption agency is because of the “travel group” set-up they have. Our travel group consists of about a dozen families, some with kids already, some without, and for one family in our group this is their second adoption from China. We will fly together, stay in the hotels together, meet our daughters together, and finish the adoption process together. We hope to make some long-term connections within our travel group so our families can stay in touch for years to come. Already K-Mom has been in frequent contact with some of the mommies regarding luggage-packing strategies.

So it’s a great set-up as far as we are concerned, but the agency is east coast based which means so are the families in our travel group. Because weekend flight schedules are limited here in Arkansas, we have to fly to Newark tomorrow in order to meet up with our travel group. On Saturday we leave for Hong Kong.

Which brings me to a question we often get asked about our trip halfway around the world: “…Do you head west, or do you head east?” The answer is: Neither. We head north. Just about due north. And that's because the fastest way to the other side of this big blue marble is over the top. It's my understanding that we will pass inside of a couple hundred miles of the north pole. In total, our flight from Newark to Hong Kong will be about 8,100 miles in sixteen hours. Yikes.

We get to Hong Kong Sunday evening, and will spend the night there. Monday a bus will take our travel group to Guangzhou and on Tuesday, “Gotcha Day”, we will have our baby at last. We are so, so, very excited.

I will do my best to keep you posted over these next few weeks. Blogspot is one of many websites blocked by the Chinese government, but I have a plan. And if that plan doesn’t work then I have a back-up plan as my dear cousin, Ms. Booty Homemaker, has agreed to post any emails I lob over the Party’s firewall.