Ethiopia Days 9 - 10 - A Visit to the Hospital

Day nine started at 1 AM when I got up to give Taye his next dose of antibiotics. I was relieved when he went right back to sleep but that easy feeling quickly disappeared when he woke up 20 minutes later and began vomiting again, this time more frequently and more violently. By 3 AM I was very worried and started thinking that we needed to get him to a hospital. I began calling people for help shortly thereafter and we departed for the hospital in the wee hours of the morning. By this point he was vomiting blood.

We spent the next two hours driving around Addis Ababa trying to find a hospital with a doctor. It was a holiday so perhaps that is why it was so difficult, but to our shock and dismay the first four hospitals we visited didn't have a doctor or anyone else on staff who could help us.

Finally we found Saint Yared General Hospital. It was down a dirt road and I feared the worst but not only did they have a doctor, they even had a pediatric ward. After a brief evaluation they agreed that Taye did indeed need to be admitted.

It took a very long time and a lot of pain to get this IV in his poor little foot. Solomon was amazing and helped hold him down when I couldn't take it any more, and entertained him with games on his iPhone when I needed a break to go cry in the next room for a minute!

I spent the next 30 hours in a chair beside his hospital bed, praying that the medication they were administering would help him. There was some frightening talk about the possibility of meningitis, and a series of tests. The vomiting stopped shortly after we got the IV drip in him and the two of us spent the rest of the day drifting in and out of sleep. Mark went back to the guest house to check on and spend some time with our other son. Poor kid probably wondered where the heck we all had gone but thankfully he seemed to be having fun playing with the baby sitters and the other kids at the guest house. At the end of the day Mark asked the sitter to spend the night with Dash and he came back to the hospital to spend the night with us.

In the evening our little man woke up, gave me a weak smile and started talking. I can't remember ever feeling such relief! We gave him a couple special toys that we had originally been saving for the airplane and he played for a while before falling into a deep sleep for the rest of the night.

All night long we could hear beautiful chanting outside our window, and I will never forget the smell of camp fire smoke that permiated the air. When the sun came up I looked out our window to see where these sounds and smells had come from and found this little community sandwiched between the highway and the hospital. Later I learned from Solomon that it was another holiday, this one dedicated to Mary, and it was the chanting of the priests at a nearby church that kept me company all night. Coincidently, my own prayers to Mary kept me company many nights over the past two years while I waited to bring the boys home.

The next afternoon we were discharged and our boy made a full recovery, although we are still batteling a cough that we think we got from our stay there (I was very glad that I had gotten all my travel shots!). We never did figure out what the problem was with Taye, but there was some speculation that originally it had been a stomach flu that became exasperated by the antibiotics he was given. One thing it was not was an ear infection.

I hope no one ever needs this information but just in case, I would recommend Dr. Daniel at Saint Yared General Hospital. We received decent care and a spacious and clean private hospital room for about 100 dollars. Dr. Daniel's English is excellent and he was straight and communicative with us, and gentle with Taye.

Ethiopia Day 7 - Care Center Visit

After a few days of bonding with our children, which had been going quite well, our agency hosted several "cultural" activities to help us learn more about Ethiopia and about our children's past. The first of these events was a visit to the care center where our boys had spent the past nine months.

The day started off nicely...

The boys donned their back packs.

We spent some time in the garden with this lovely family.

We posed for a family portrait that you have all probably seen by now...

...then we drove out to the Gladney Care Center.

Many people had warned us that this day was difficult and we worried about how hard it would be for us given the age of our boys and the length of time they had been in care. We knew Gladney took excellent care of the children and that likely our boys would have developed a bond with these people. I asked our agency for advice and they said that this day was indeed a step backward in the bonding process, but they did not think we should wait until the end of the week to take placement (not sure I would have been able to wait that long anyway!). I thought I was prepared for what was to come but I am not sure there is any way to really prepare for this. I will share with you our experience in the event that it helps someone else.

Shortly after we arrived the boys' "Special Mothers"--the women who had been their primary care givers for the past 9 months--came and took them back to their old room to change into traditional Ethiopian clothing for a coffee ceremony that was about to happen. They were only gone a short period of time before returning with the boys and with presents for Mark and me. We also gave them a gift of photo books of the boys that I had made on Snapfish.com and thanked them as best we could for all they had done over the past nine months.

By this point we could see that Taye was happy to see these familiar faces and wasn't too happy about the idea of coming back to us.

Dash, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction and cried when the women wanted to take him away again. Regardless, they whisked him off and Mark and I started our tour of the care center.

When we got to the boys' room we found Dash in his crib doing this. He stopped crying when I picked him up and held him for a while, then he got down and happily went to play with his buddies (I can't show pictures of the other children so you don't get to see the happy pictures!).

Taye was in his crib singing along to one of his favorite songs and obviously happy to be back in familiar surroundings. When we tried to take the boys with us to the next room Taye cried like we had never heard. Actually, this was the first time we had heard either boy cry so the whole thing was pretty upsetting and overwhelming for me and I ended up in tears myself. Of course I didn't let the boys see this but pretty much everyone else did. Not my best moment!

The folks at Gladney were great--clearly they had seen this before--and they helped us decide to leave the boys to play with their friends while we continued on the tour, since we had some important care packages to deliver and pictures to take for people. The boys seemed happy to stay with their buddies so the plan was to leave them there until we were ready to go in order to minimize their confusion but...

...some communication got crossed and when we got back to the coffee ceremony there they were! One look at us was enough to provoke another round of very loud crying for what seemed like a very long time and our efforts to comfort them only made it worse. Poor kids!!

Eventually, with the help of a some lollipops and popcorn (clearly I am not above bribery)...

...the tears stopped and we were able to enjoy the coffee ceremony.

Hand roasted coffee and popcorn is traditionally served to guests in Ethiopia. The coffee truly is some of the best I have ever had.

Finally we left for the guest house. This picture says it all about how we were feeling. Mark loves this picture and thinks it looks like I just gave birth to two toddlers. Indeed.

The rest of our day didn't look much different!

I am not sure how the new two trip rule changes the agenda while in country, but for those adopting toddlers and older children, if this day is still on the agenda be forewarned, it might be pretty tough on your kids and on you. If I had it to do over again I would have left the boys at the guest house with a babysitter. I think it was just unnecessarily draining and confusing for them. Thanks to those of you who warned me. If only I had heeded your warnings more aggressively!

It also must be said that the fact that our boys loved it there so much is a tribute to the excellent care they received. We get that and are grateful that our boys had the opportunity to bond with these lovely women during their stay there.

If you have received a referral of a child in House #4, shoot me an email! Somehow I managed to have the presence of mind to take several pictures of the kids that were roomies with our boys!

The Suspense Continues

Most families find out their travel dates the day they pass court...

But it just wouldn't be right for us to get through this last and final phase without a few delays, would it?

Our agency needed a little extra time to find out if they can get our court decree in time for us to travel in the next group.

Fine, no problem.

We thought we would find out on Monday...

Then Tuesday (today)...

Now Wednesday!!!

So, tomorrow.

Okay, no problem.

Tomorrow we hope to hear that we will be traveling in the next group, which would mean we leave in ONE WEEK!

They did tell us to put our flights on hold so I'm hoping that's a good sign...

One week, people!

But first, tomorrow...

Three Court Dates Would Have Been Too Easy

That's right, no court date for us tomorrow after all. Apparently it is a holiday in Ethiopia and the courts are closed.

I know, good grief!

The good news...the very good news...is that we are on for Thursday and we got confirmation that the new ID has been obtained.

Aaaaaaaah!

Optimism

The sun came up this morning in spite of our disappointing news yesterday, and it even shines a little brighter today. The punched in the gut feeling has subsided and, although I admit, I am still disappointed and a little weepy, I do find myself looking for the positives.

It’s funny. Before all this started I wouldn’t have described myself as an optimist. I'm much more of a realist really (Mark might have called me a pessimist), but since starting this process I have been extremely optimistic, almost ridiculously so. Yesterday I felt angry at my optimism. I felt like instead of getting positive energy turned into positive action, all it has brought is disappointment after disappointment. But that’s wrong. The outcome would have been the same whether I spent the last year and a half thinking postitive thoughts or negative ones. There is no way to protect your heart from the bumps in the road if they happen. And being optimistic has served a valuable purpose in all of this. It has allowed me to have many moments of joy and peace while waiting for the ultimate joy to come.

I can feel my optimism returning. It would be a shameful waste of precious life to spend the next few months sitting around feeling sorry for myself anyway.

I am also ending the pity party because I know that it is hard for everyone. Doesn’t matter if you have been waiting sixteen months or two months or four years. The waiting is hard and it sucks and that’s about all there is to say about it. And what about how hard it has been for the boys and their birth family? Thirteen months on the wait list, a delayed court process and an unexpected second trip to Ethiopia certainly don’t add up to a fraction of that. Maybe it’s even fitting that our journey to those boys includes pain.

Last night I had twinges of blog post regret. I don’t like posting bad news, especially before I have had a chance to put a bright and shiny spin on it, but then your comments started coming in and I realized, for about the hundredth time, how lucky I feel to have you all out there. In the moment of crushing disappointment it felt like telling you – those who are going through it or who have gone through it themselves and those who are going through it with us – it felt like telling you would make me feel better.

It did.

Thank you for all your words of support. You boosted me up. You kept me afloat. Amazing how a little sympathy and compassion can get a person through a tough night.

Onward…

Not So Wordless Afterall

Well, we got an update from our caseworker today and it's not good news. Apparently they are still waiting for a document from the orphanage in order to complete our file. This means that our case hasn't even been submitted to the courts yet. It's hard to understand why we have been so unlucky with wait times and hard to swallow that after more than 6 months in care already, these boys have more months ahead of them before they have a family. I think I know what a punching bag feels like...

Changes to the Changes

Our agency sent out a notice this afternoon indicating that the new court date requirements will not effect families who receive court dates prior to April 9th.

We might just squeak through (now that I have gotten all excited about two trips to Ethiopia and seeing the boys sooner than later!).

Of course, we thought we would get our referral five months sooner than we did, so I am not even going to hazard a guess as to when we'll hear about our court date. Que sera, sera.

They also indicated that there are likely more changes coming as everyone digests this news and figures out what it all means.

Hang tight, fellow waiters. Stay tuned, wonderful supporters...your words of encouragement are so very appreciated.

(If you have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, read my earlier post below.)

Changes

As many of you have heard, there were big announcements this week concerning adoptions from Ethiopia.

My week started with this notice from the US Department of State announcing a “change in processing time for adoption cases”. A knot of fear the size of a beach ball formed in my gut and I had a meltdown in the car on my way to the office when I called Mark to tell him about it. Tears and fears of the worst kind came pouring out, into and onto the phone, make-up running, sniffles and sobs. Poor Mark!

The next day our agency responded by saying that they don’t perceive this announcement to be a significant change for their families. They have always delivered gobs of paperwork to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa. The embassy has always had the option of investigating further if they found something suspect. This always had the potential to delay the children’s homecoming. We knew all of this but our agency is ethically rock solid, and we haven’t seen anyone experience this type of delay, so we weren’t too worried about it before. Now?  Now we want to believe that these new precautions will only impact agencies like this. The knot of fear in my gut only allows me to believe that time will tell.

Then, throwing salt on the wound, the federal courts in Ethiopia announced yesterday that adoptive parents will now have to travel to Addis Ababa to appear in person for their court date. Previously families only traveled one time, once the adoption was finalized. This goes into effect immediately for anyone who doesn't already have a court date, a.k.a us. Doesn't matter that we have been waiting 9 1/2 weeks for our court date. It is anticipated that this new trip will be for approximately 5 days, at which point families will have to return home without their children, and then go back another 3 to 6 weeks later for their embassy appointment. At that point the children will be allowed to enter the United States and we can bring them home. This is assuming the embassy notice mentioned above doesn’t impact anything.

Knot of fear #1, meet knot of fear #2!

What this means for us is that we will most likely (HOPEFULLY) be among the first to do this – the guinea pigs (I'm ok with that). It means significant added expense, and an unexpected week away from work (we'll manage somehow). It means we might have very little notice before getting on a plane to Ethiopia (I'm ok with that too). It means we will get to meet the boys weeks or even months sooner than expected (clearly I am ok with that!), but only for one day and then we will have to leave them in Ethiopia, return home, and wait some more (ugh, ugh, and ugh). It means this knot of fear in my stomach, now the size of one of those exercise balls at the gym, probably isn’t going to go away for a while.

It also, hopefully, means that disreputable agencies will be stopped. That child trafficking will be thwarted. That idiots people like this won’t have the chance to adopt children and then return them like a pair of shoes that didn’t fit. This needs to happen, and I think these new measures will help.

Side note: If you are reading this and thinking about adopting from anywhere, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Find a reputable agency. Read about how hard the transition might be. Think about how much your life is going to change and whether you are ready for that. Find a support group. Understand that your child(ren) will very likely have some condition – medical, emotional, physical, developmental – that you were not aware of or prepared for! These risks apply to biological children too and just like biological children, adopted children are FOREVER. OK, stepping down off the soapbox...

You may have noticed that I am a glass half full kind of girl so here’s the good news...

1. WE GET TO MEET THE TWINS instead of moping around CT waiting to pass court! It’s not like that week was going to be a particularly productive one anyway!! And it might...oh, please, please please...happen soon.

2. WE GET TO EXPERIENCE ETHIOPIA, our beloved adopted country, TWICE! We were already planning to go over early to travel outside of Addis. Now we’ll just go to Addis twice instead. Mark has been sending me links all morning to the things he wants to do and see.

3. This change will also, hopefully, make things easier on the birth family, who wants to meet us and us them, but who would have had to make two long, arduous and heartbreaking trips to Addis – once for court and then again to meet us. Now we will all be there for the court date (hopefully!).

4. We are lucky. We can take the time off from work. We don’t have any children (YET) and the dogs will just have to suck it up at the kennel an extra week. Financially, well, I feel a little woozy about that one but we will figure it out. It won’t be easy but we can do it. We are now grateful (gasp) that we have had two years to save for the unexpected. My heart goes out to the families who will have more of a struggle with these things.

Honestly, I am excited - if I would let myself it would be bouncing off the walls excited - about getting on that plane and meeting those boys sooner than later. I would do it tomorrow if I could.

And finally, all of this really isn’t unexpected. Every time something about this hit the media or the big Ethiopian adoption Yahoo Group, I would get a little breathless with panic, because this is exactly the kind of thing that shut the doors to international adoption in Vietnam and Guatemala. I am grateful that measures are being put in place to manage the unethical practices and hopeful that it means adoptions in Ethiopia can continue for as long as there are children in need of homes.

So...deep breaths. No one said this was going to be easy and since when do Mark and I do things the easy way anyway?

Onward…

P.S. If you are reading this and thinking it would have been nice of me to call you with these developments, please forgive me. I am a little worn out by all of it and thought it would be better to give all the details here. Please don't worry about us. We're tougher than we look!

Month 12

That’s right! Today is the anniversary of the day Mark and I received the wonderful news that we were approved and officially placed on the wait list to adopt siblings from Ethiopia. We have officially been waiting a full year, unofficially a year and six months, which is a lot longer than we thought we'd have to wait, and I'm pretty sure longer than any other family with our agency, but not nearly as long as many families have waited with other agencies. I chuckle now to think of all the things I tried to do to make this process go faster. Truly this is out of my hands and in the hands of something/someone much bigger than little ol’ control freak me. I thought I got that before, but I don’t think I really did until this past month.

I cannot tell a lie, this past month has been tough. Some of the challenges have been related to the length of time we have been waiting, and others have been related to some unexpected calls that we received from our agency. I really believed that I had thought through all the possible scenarios of how this was going to go down, but I missed this scenario completely and that caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to tell this story, but then I was inspired by the honesty of this person when she wrote this and I think our story might actually help someone else some day so here it is.

Typically how it works is that our agency matches a family with a child or children, and then lots of stuff goes on behind the scenes to make sure that the child(ren) are truly available for that family to pursue. Things like the birth family interview, developmental evaluation, medical tests and I think maybe some paperwork all typically happen without the family knowing anything about being matched. Sometimes that behind the scenes stuff can take a few months, especially if a family has requested a second PCR test, and often the child(ren) have been in Gladney’s care for some time before the family is called with their referral (that’s when you find out who you have been matched with, get to see pictures, learn their history, health, etc.). Typically the referral call is the only call a family receives.

Much to our shock and dismay, a month ago we received a different kind of call, and learned that we still had not even been matched. Because we had waited such a long time and because there still were no siblings available within our age preference, our agency called while they were in the process of trying to match us to ask if we wanted to up our age preference. Over a year ago, we intentionally had our home study written to allow exactly this to happen, but truthfully we never dreamed that it would and we had sort of forgotten about it until we got this call.

Let me back up a bit. About 15 months ago, while we were in the midst of doing our home study, we had a conversation with Belay, the head of our agency’s program in Ethiopia. In that conversation he confirmed that the wait for a young sibling pair was unpredictable and that it really depended on who else was on the waitlist ahead of us and what children were available when our turn came up. He pointed out that sometimes children became available that were just slightly outside a family’s age preference, especially if that preference was in the extremely popular 0 – 12 month range, but if their home study only approved them for children up to 12 months of age he couldn’t even tell the family about the slightly older children. He said that once he had 15 month old twins with no family to adopt them in spite of the fact that several families were waiting for an infant or twins 0-12 months.

We took that conversation to heart and in order to keep our options open, we had our home study written to approve us for two children 0 – 5 years of age. Then when it came time to specify our preference, we asked our agency to match us with siblings who were 0-15 and 0-39 months old (originally we had it at 0-12 and 0-30 but we upped it in April hoping to speed things up. Chuckling again…you can’t blame a girl for trying!). Typically families are matched with children within their specified preference. In fact, I can't think of any stories where that did not happen, which is why I was caught off guard when our caseworker called.

It must be said that we are glad Gladney is handeling our case this way, and we trust that everything is going to work out just as it should in time, but we can see why most families are shielded from this stage of the process.

I don’t mean to be mysterious, but for many reasons I cannot reveal all the details of the calls we have had with our caseworker over the past month. Suffice it to say that we have increased our age range in order to pursue a specific sibling pair that might become available. We have not seen their faces and we don’t know much about them other than their approximate ages, and we don't know when we will learn more. To get an idea of what I mean by might become available, head over here and console this amazing family who apparently has been having similar conversations with their caseworker.

So, we wait some more, but we’ve had a small preview into what might be to come, and we are holding our breath, hoping that this next call is good news and that it comes soon. Stay tuned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the meantime, please also head over here, to the blog of my wait list buddy, Beka – my wait list TWIN actually because we went on the wait list the same day, exactly one year ago today. Beka, is anxiously awaiting news of whether she and her husband passed court in Ethiopia last night. If you read her post on December 10th I won’t have to tell you how amazing she is. Who has the presence of mind, after waiting so very long to bring her son home, to so graciously think of others on a night like that?! My beloved wait list twin, Beka, that’s who. I am blessed.

Worst Case Scenario

So…a few days after I wrote this…where I pontificated about how calm, cool and collected I have been with this whole wait thing, I decided it might be fun to resurrect a game of blog tag (cause seriously, people, how much more can I write about this wait!). I was tagged last November so I scrolled down to that post and realized that some of the blogs I tagged back then were no longer familiar to me. “Hmmm...I wonder whatever happened to…”

BAM! Peaceful, calm, cool, collected Zen-like demeanor blown to smithereens!

One of the “worst case scenarios” that has been in the back of my mind lo these many months is the possibility of an unknown family ahead of us on the wait list, waiting for siblings. Remember the FBI list is unofficial and not all families put themselves on this list. Sibling referrals are so much harder to come by that having another family with the same preference as us could significantly impact our wait time...

Sure enough, what I discovered in my exploration of blog tag, was that my worst case scenario is true. There IS another family* out there. They are waiting for siblings. They are with Gladney. They went on the waitlist about three months ahead of us. They have been waiting 10 ½ months and counting…

Boo hoo! I wasn’t much fun to be around last Sunday. During the 14 months we have been on this journey I have struggled with the wait on two occasions. This would be number three. I made the discovery just before leaving for church and I sat numb throughout the service, and then poor Mark had to drag around a sad and mopey wife all afternoon. It is so much easier to be positive, calm, cool and collected when you think the call is coming when you thought it would come…but 3 months longer than expected…or more! Ack!

By Monday I felt a little better. I got a good night’s sleep. I went to the gym. I went to work. I picked fresh veggies from our garden and made a really nice salad…oh, the small things. I realized we wouldn’t be getting through court before the fall anyway so maybe it wasn’t so terrible to have to wait a few extra months. I got some much needed support from a few friends, including my sweet waitlist buddy, Beka. I thought about our local friends who got their referral last August and only just recently received a court date (8/14, say prayers). I thought about how gracefully Monique has weathered a year of bad news and what an amazing example of strength she has been for many of us. I thought I should snap out of it and be more like Monique.

By Tuesday I was feeling strong but the curiosity was killing me. I had to know what I was dealing with. So I contacted this other family and she kindly obliged. They are requesting “a baby girl as young as possible with an older brother 2 ½ to 6 years old”. I decided that this is good news, that their preference is really quite specific and leaves many possibilities open for us. Twins, for example! Or a baby boy with an older sister! Or two boys or two girls!

So here we are, not even a week later, and I am back in the lotus position. I am feeling positive and hopeful and excited, not a trace of last Sunday’s gloom. I am rooting for this other family, on the edge of my seat waiting to hear their good news. I expect that we will sit at the top of the FBI for a while longer but I hope that it won’t be more than another month…or two…ok maybe three…

Ah, the rollercoaster ride of International Adoption. Ups and downs and all, it is still rewarding in indescribable ways and worth every tummy turning bump.

* For any of you sleuths out there (takes one to know one!)...I have deleted the link to this other family’s blog from my November post. I figure if they have not placed themselves on the FBI list, then it is not my place to take them public.