The Big 3-0

This is my first post as a trigenarian. My mom and dad came on Saturday and prepared a YUM-EE meal. To top off Mom's brownies, the master brought Blue Bell into my home. Sinfull stuff. And I ate WAY too much. Around our bowls that night, Abby asked, "So, mom, how old are you?"

"Until Tuesday, I'll be 29. Then I will be 30."

"Thirrrrrr-teeeee! WOW!" Coming around the table, she put her hand on my shoulder sympathetically, "You better enjoy these last few days."

Old Posts

This is one of those promised posts from the time Cara was in the neonatal ICU.

July 1, 2008
What an emotional day! Full of highs and lows. I'm exhausted, but want to make a record of our journey, before too much of it slips away in forgetfulness. I feel as though I've slipped back into the dark ages by using this pen. It might as well be a feather, and this jar of spinach dip at my elbow, an ink pot.
My first tears of the the day hit at 11:00, when the speech therapist cane in to give Cara her bottle. She is taking two bottle feeds every 24 hours, with the day feed supervised by the speech therapist. Don't ask me why she is called a 'speech' therapist when her sole occupation is feeding infants who are totally inarticulate. Be that as it may, she is very good at what she does. This morning she wanted me to try to give Cara the bottle, while she watched. She was gentle in her suggestions and tips, but there is so much to remember. It is nothing like nursing or even bottle feeding a full term baby. Finally, I asked the speech therapist to take over. I didn't want Cara to miss out on her feeding because I couldn't get it together. As we transferred Cara and she took over the bottle, the tears began to gather. I'm not used to feeling inadequate when it comes to mothering. I'm usually the "experienced mom" who everyone else comes to with their questions and concerns. All of my confidence deserted me as I watched a stranger expertly nourishing that tiny, teeny baby--my baby--while I sat by, useless. The tears dripped down and I dabbed them with a burp rag.
The nurses were very supportive, and assured me that I will improve with time, but is a humbling, frustrating experience, all the same.

*I did get it, too. I feed her now with all the techniques, and don't even think about it. Of course, she is able to take the bottle more normally, as well.

The second round of tears were tears of joy and relief. I had just about given up hope that we would hear the test results today. The neonatalogist was late for rounds and when he finally arrived, went through his whole spill on lipids, and CC's and brain sonograms, etc., and I'm wondering how I will be able to stand another night of this agony? He finally comes to the end and says, "Any questions?"
"Do you think we will get the results from the PCR tomorrow?"
"Oh...." he's checking on his laptop, "We already have that..."
Umm....that was important! Life and death important! What part of, "Please notify us immediately of the test results," was confusing for you? In that split second, I'm sure the world stood still.
"Negative."
"Praise God."
And praise Him and praise Him.

July 2, 2008

Some ground gained today and some lost. Cara came off of isolation. That means that I do not have to suit up in a surgical drape and wear gloves when touching her. She is so soft! Cara was moved from a warmer to a crib. I can now dress her. The only problem is, I didn't bring any of her already substantial wardrobe. What was I thinking? The nurses put her in a terribly ugly wrap--complete with hospital stamp. It did nothing for her. So I walked over to the resale shop (run by the hospital volunteer auxiliary) and bought the only preemie onesie they had. It may not like much, but it is a huge improvement.
And the bad news: Cara is still losing weight. It is very discouraging. Tomorrow, I'm not going to hold her at all, in case the movement from bed to arms and back again is causing her to expend more calories.

* I wasn't able to follow through with that. I just couldn't help picking her up! She needed her Mommy snuggles. The next day, the doctors finally listened to reason and switched her to breast milk, and she did wonderfully after that.

New Cara Pic and Water Park

O.K., I know you are all dying for some updated picture of the babe...so here you go. She weighed in yesterday at six pounds five ounces. Still sleeping for most of the day. I've been laying in wait with my camera all afternoon, so that I could catch her with her eyes open. I'm anxious for the point when we can really interact with her, but I know when it comes, a part (the harried mother of six part) of me will miss this sleep-around-the-clock stage.

And since this blog has been rather Cara heavy of late, I've included some snapshots of our trip to the water playground this morning. Big fun!

A Good Call Afterall

As many of you may remember, we started looking into our second adoption about a year and half ago. We began with contacting our old agency. They were anything but encouraging about proceeding with another adoption. In our dialogue, they indicated that they believed adding to our family--and thereby displacing Marina--would only be a detriment to the stability of our home and a serious setback for Marina. Once again, thinking back on that exchange, I have to wonder, what did they expected us to do with Randy? Sell him to the down river gypsies? Lock him in a closet for eighteen years? Make an adoption plan for our one year old? Ha. Ha. With B____ serving as the placement agency, no doubt. I mean, really people, that ship had sailed.

We moved adoption to the back burner. Not because of their ludicrous objection, but since we would obviously not be using them again, there was no need to rush. Any psychological damage to Marina by her "displacement" had already been done by the birth of her of little brother. And both the master and I were convinced that having another child join our family through adoption would actually benefit Marina.

The preliminary findings are in: we were right. Cara joining our family has already been the impetus for many positive adoption conversations. Marina is making connections to her adoption story as never before. She is able to compare and contrast her story with Cara's. And this is a child for whom connections do not come easy! If she were a cartoon character, we could pencil in a light bulb right over her head. Marina has been able to see for herself our complete joy, excitement, and acceptance for a baby sister that, "did not grow in Mommy's belly."

Tuesday morning, I was letting Cara "nurse," while her bottle warmed. Abby and Marina came in.

Marina: Mom, what are you doing?

Abby: as though highly knowledgeable on this subject She is feeding Baby Cara. Don't you remember? That is how she fed Randy. Babies drink their mommy's milk.

Me: Actually, Cara is not drinking any milk.

Abby: Why?

Marina: She is not hungry?

Me: No, she is hungry. In just a minute, I will feed her a bottle. I can't give her milk from my breasts, because I did not give birth to her.

Abby: Did I drink breastmilk? *Not sure why she asked this, because she knows that she did. *

Me: Yes

Marina: Did I?

Me: No, you were much older when you came home, and you drank milk from a bottle. Like Cara.

Marina: putting her hand, oh, so softly, on Cara's belly, and sighing contentedly Like me. Cara is adopted. Like me.

And, looking up into my eyes, she smiled.

I think we did the right thing.

Cara Comes Home

*UPDATE* Dinner arrived fifteen minutes later from the church. Pot roast and potatoes and carrots. Fresh from the garden green beans. Hot rolls and rice and gravy. I do not know how people survive in this world without a church family.
Cari, Ian is not displeased with his new sister. In this picture, he was just getting over being severely scolded. I was bent over the baby's diaper bag when he crouched down right behind me and when I turned, I fell over him. I almost couldn't right myself and would have fallen flat on my face with the baby. It was a near miss.

After a VERY long day yesterday, Cara came home. I was so anxious all morning at the children's hospital--fearful that something was going to fall through at the last minute. Her temperature would rise (the medical angle), or some form would need a certain stamp (the legal angle), but things fell into place and our plane arrived right on schedule. One neonatalogist (who had not seen Cara until yesterday) tried to give me a hard time about remaining in the hospital "a few more days to a week" for them to switch her off of breast milk and make sure she could tolerate the new formula.


"But she has a prescription for donor milk from the state milk bank."


"But in my experience those arrangements rarely work out. There is much red tape, and then, the parents must consistently defrost and prepare the milk. And since she is strong and gaining weight, one could say she does not need the breastmilk."


Well, his experience must not include any headstrong cajuns. And by this point, I was about ready to throttle the next doctor who told me that, "babies do not need breastmilk." Have these men not read the American Journal of Pediatric Medicine? Where have they had their heads buried for the last twenty years of medical research? Could it be that she is strong and gaining weight BECAUSE she is getting breastmilk?


Ugh. I told him clearly and firmly that the last two neonatalogists who had been on rounds--and had treated Cara for the last three weeks--did not share his concern and had both assured me that we could be discharged on Monday. I had already purchased our tickets home. She was maintaining her temperature and taking her feeds. I had every intention of continuing the breastmilk--was already having a case FedExed to my home--for as long as the milk bank would issue it to her. And even if the ground opened up and swallowed Austin tomorrow (which really wouldn't surprise me), I was certain my pediatrician could make recommendations for a substitute formula and monitor her tolerance of it. WE WERE GOING HOME.


He acquiesced.


Cara loved riding in the sling all warm and cozy on the flight home. The master and all the kids and Nana and Papa were waiting for us. It felt so good to hug them all. We drove over to our agency to sign our placement papers. Denise took our first family photograph that you see here. Then it was home again, home again, jiggety jig.


We have had a rather laid back first day. Cara is in her bouncy seat, sucking on her binky, and the older kids are outside in the backyard playing. If only I could tell you dinner was cooked!

Thank You Ronald McDonald

Praise be! The Ronald McDonald House does not block blogger. Now you will be able to get up to the minute updates on Cara. Wish I had figured that out three days ago when I took up residence here. Unfortunately, my words will have to paint a picture, because I'm not able to load pictures.
Cara is doing well. I finally convinced the doctors to use donor breast milk, so she is now sucking down liquid gold every three hours. She is taking five out of her eight feedings in a bottle and they are putting the rest down the tube. I'm really hoping for six out of eight tomorrow....that will put us at 8 of 8 for Friday or Saturday and then 24 hours of making sure that she can maintain that, then the tube comes out, and we come home on Monday? Hoping, hoping, hoping for that. Is my desperation coming across?
I'm ready to get her (and me too) home. I miss the master and my babies, and want to get them all under one roof.

Some Cara Cuteness

And now for a little shot of sweetness.

Part Two-The Call

The rest of that day passed in a fog. I hope all the daycare children were properly cared for. That evening we went to VBS. I taught the 3-4 year olds. Again, I pray whatever instruction proceeded from my mouth was sound and Biblical. I have no recollection. We didn't say anything to anyone about our big news. We knew it could all fall apart in a moment, and we didn't want to have to face a hundred questions of, "I thought you two were getting a baby!" The one exception was our pastor. Since the master was VBS director, we thought we should give him the heads up that we may be called away for the rest of the week. Ironically, he tried to talk the master out of the adoption. If he had been concerned about our ability to offer her a good life, I might have been o.k. with it. But he didn't seem to have any hesitations on that score. His main argument was that having a baby would be an inconvenience to us and may have health problems. She could cost money. ALL of his advice was worldly in nature. I'm glad I was not there. My alter ego--Sister Ethyl--may have jumped down his throat with a hundred different verses. But that wouldn't have been respectful to my under-shepperd. It is my hope that the Holy Spirit will change his heart when he sees that we do not approach parenthood as a burden or a cross that we must bear. We are both filled with joy and feel so blessed to be her mommy and daddy. We feel as though we have won the lottery.
After VBS, we came home and sent the children immediately to bed. Then we get a call from Denise. The birthmom (I'm going to refer to her as C.C.) wants to speak with us. Whaaa.......I was not ready for that, and extremely nervous, but, "Sure. Put her on." She was pretty out of it--a combination of being on pain meds and off crack--but she asked us questions like where we were from, and what kind of things we liked to do on the weekend, and why we wanted another kid. I was confused because all of that information was in the book right there in front of her. Later, Denise admitted that she didn't think that C.C. could focus on the book long enough to read it. A few minutes into the conversation, C.C. fell asleep mid-sentence.
Denise came back on and said that C.C. liked our profile, but she still wanted to meet with the other agency and we needed to support her in that decision. And we did. Even more than we wanted that baby (and we wanted her a whole, whole bunch), we wanted her to have peace that she was doing the right thing for her baby. The other agency would be there at 10:00. She should know by eleven if C.C. was going to choose us or go with the other agency.
As you can imagine, I didn't sleep much that night. And I went through the motions of daycare the next morning. After fielding a few jump-the-gun calls from Mom and the master (that probably shaved a good five years off my life expectancy--thanks alot you two), I got THE call at noon. She picked us!
I whispered a, "Thank you, God" and started shouting to the kids that they had a baby sister. Anyone who thinks that children in large families resent the introduction of a new member or in some way become bored or calloused to the event, should have been in my living room. There were squeals and shouts, hand-stands and back springs, and about a million questions.
"When can we see her?!"
"When will she come home?!"
"What will we name her?!"
The noise was so deafening that Denise had to hold the phone away from her ear. Which turned out to be a good thing. Later, we learned that when she pulled the phone away, C.C. was able to hear our celebration. She still had doubts about her decision, thinking that we were adopting Cara because we felt sorry for her. She didn't want her baby to be adopted out of pity. Our jubilation at the news went a long way toward giving her peace. She asked Denise for the phone. I thanked her over and over again. She seemed at a loss for words. She wanted to thank me. She said she thought we would give her baby a good Christian home.
I promised her we would be there as soon as possible, and when I hung up the phone, I called the master and started throwing clothes in the suitcase.

Long, Long Post--Part One

I am so sorry to have kept all of you in the dark for the past week and a half. I attempted to fill you in last week, but the children's hospital where Baby Cara is, does not allow social/networking websites on their complementary parent-use computers (which begs the question--What good are they?!) Oh, how I longed for a lap top! A few nights, I tried to scribble a log, and will eventually load those posts here, but life is super crazy right now. I'm going to have to play catch-up.
Debbie mentioned that our announcement was a surprise because she thought we were on hold with our agency. Well, we were. We never called our agency and told them to start showing our profile again. First, we were waiting for the master's prosthesis. Then, we were waiting for our tax return and stimulus check. Then the master comes home one evening and says that he is ready to go back in to the pastorate. OooooKaaaaaay....he sends out resumes to different churches all over the state. Now we may be moving? Everything in our life was catty-wumpus, and I couldn't see how an adoption would fit into it. How could I look a birthmother in the eye and say we wanted a fully open adoption, and then take her baby to live hours and hours away? Where we live now is very multi-cultural. Would our next town be? Since we fully expected to adopt an African-American infant, these were important considerations. Would our son or daughter be the only black child in the church? In the neighborhood? In their kindergarten class? I couldn't do that to a kid.
At some point, I resigned to the fact that the adoption was not going to happen even though it hurt (see Worthless post below), and I still felt like someone was missing from our family. We took the money we had been saving for the adoption and paid off our credit cards. I postponed posting that decision, telling the kids, or notifying my agency. Calling them would be admitting to myself that the adoption was really over. I figured they would be sitting around the office one day and someone would say, "Hey, whatever happened to the Su____'s?" and then they would phone, and I would have to be honest with them and ask them to close our file indefinitely.
When the phone rang on Tuesday morning (June 24th) and I heard the voice answer,
"Hi, Jessica, this is Denise from ________," I thought the dreaded call had arrived. My heart sunk to my stomach. But her next words made it go straight through the floor, "We have a baby for you!"
I started to cry. "But we don't...."
"No. Don't start crying. It is going to be all right. We know you were supposed to be on hold, and we know that you do not have the money right now, but this is a God thing. We will work the financial part out later. This is your baby. Now, do you want to hear about her?"
A baby girl born the day before. Caucasian. *Though we now think there is a good probability she is part Hispanic. Just look at that beautiful head full of black hair!* 34 weeks gestation. 4 lbs. 5 0z......
As she went on, I felt transported in time to Marina's referral meeting. Except that one baby was born in Russia, and the other born right here in our home state, it was the same history, exposure, and diagnosis. The hair on my arms stood up. This was our daughter. She couldn't be anyone elses. Nothing about what Denise had to say (and believe me, alot of it wasn't pretty) frightened us, because we had heard it all before.

Later, we would find out that the ladies at the agency had a similar reaction. When they got the call from our birthmother, they had it on speaker phone. Denise talked with the birthmother and Anne jotted down notes. As soon as the phone clicked, they looked at each other, and with the same breath exclaimed, "The Su______!"

Just as we were wrapping up the conversation, she got a call from the birthmother. Now she said that she wanted to interview with another agency in addition to ____. Denise was on her way down there, with our book alone, but the other agency (if they would accept her as a client) would likely bring a prospective family's profile as well. We would be left in the agony of suspense for another 24-hours (read: an eternity). But deep down, it felt so right. A perfect fit. How could she not be ours?
Debbie, if you thought you were surprised, imagine how the master felt, when I called him at work and told him he had a brand-new baby girl!