Coming Home

As I type this we are packing things up and getting ready to come home...beautiful words to a mommy in a foreign country with a sick daughter! It's only 4:30 in the morning here. We have an 8:30am flight to Hong Kong, then our 12 1/2 hour flight to San Francisco and our last leg to Los Angeles. I've never been more excited to come home. Thank you all so much for your prayers. I know they are working. Lily is getting better every day. I have to wake her up now to get her ready to go. We'll see you when we get home!

Feeling Better

Last night was a much better night for Lily...and for us! When we first put her down (very late as we had a treatment at 10:00pm) she coughed quite a bit. Finally she fell asleep. I watched her for a while, making sure I could see her little chest moving up and down. Next thing I knew it was morning! I got up to get ready for the day before waking her. When I came out of the bathroom, daddy had her on his lap feeding her her morning bottle. What an amazing feeling. It was so precious to see him there with her...his daughter. As soon as she saw me she started fussing, but not nearly as badly as she usually does. They are doing so much better. I finished feeding her as Robert got ready. The 2 of them went down to breakfast together while I finished preparing for the day. It's so quiet in this room when she isn't here. When I went down daddy was feeding her breakfast and she didn't cry to come to me! That was quite a milestone for her. After breakfast we went back to the clinic for her nebulization treatment. We were prepared for a 15 minute screaming session. We got about 30 seconds of mild protest and then she fell asleep! At this very moment, she is lying in her crib and daddy is lying on the bed next to her. We thought she'd be exhausted and want to take a nap, but it's not to be. She is giggling and making her little baby sounds, trying with all her might to sit up by herself. Our baby is going to be ok...praise God. The next thing we have to do is go to the Consulate for our oath at 3:00, and then the last nebulization and final doctor visit at 5:30. Then we come back to the room to pack our things and get ready to head home. I've never looked forward to going home so much. Please continue to pray for her health, and for our travels tomorrow. I'll post again once more before we leave, and hopefully I'll have a few more pictures. We didn't get any yesterday with all that was going on, but we will be sure to get a picture of Dr. Nong...our hero!

Praises and Prayer Requests

Today has been a very long day. We spent another pretty much sleepless night with Lily last night. She was up coughing all night long and it started sounding worse. This morning she was wheezing so after breakfast we decided we'd better have a doctor check her out. Our guide gave us the address of a clinic nearby at the Garden Hotel. We got there and waited not too long before seeing the doctor on duty. He ordered some blood tests and a chest X-Ray. Before he sent us for the tests he was telling us how "these babies" (referring to babies in orphanages) always have problems and that Lily didn't look too good. He then told us to wait about an hour and a half for the test results. We hung around the waiting room. Today was my true breaking-in as a mother...I've never been so worried in all of my life. Lily was playing as usual and Robert and I were just kind of staring off into nowhere...wondering, praying. When the doctor finally came back he showed us her X-Ray. He showed us there was something on her lung. He ruled out bronchitis, but said it could be pneumonia or mono. If it was mono she would have to be hospitalized and we would not be able to leave on Friday. My heart sank. The blood test results showed some things were off (I can't remember specifically right now) but it could be malnutrition (not surprising) or something worse. He recommended a nebulizer treatment and that we wait to see the Pediatric Specialist who was coming in at 5:00 (by now it was now 3:30). Everything in me wanted to get the heck out of there and just get my baby home. Being sick in a foreign country is not exactly ideal! Robert and I decided we would meet with him...better safe than sorry. She took her treatment, screaming the whole time. Afterwards we went down to get something to eat. I couldn't even think about eating, but Lily hadn't eaten since her bottle at lunch. After we ate we got back up to the office and ended up waiting another hour for the Pediatrition. He was stuck in traffic and the nurse kept coming in telling us "15 more minutes". That was a long 15 minutes! We were glad we waited. Dr. Nong diagnosed her with pnuemonia. She got another nebulizer treatment and he prescribed 3 different medications for her. He was so kind and understanding. After going to get her prescription, he came back and said that 2 of them were not available at the clinic and asked us to follow him to his hospital so we could get it there. We all shared a cab and he generously paid the cab driver...refusing to take our money. Once we got inside the hospital he took us up to get the prescriptions. Robert thanked him again for the cab, and he in turn thanked us for adopting one of their orphans. My heart melted. We got the precriptions and he walked us out to hail us a cab back to our hotel. We came back long enough to feed Lily again, give her her antibiotics, check in with our moms and grab a quick bite before we had to head out for her next treatment at 10:00. The same nurse helped us again. She was very sweet. Lily screamed again for a while, but finally gave up and fell asleep. The nurse also told us how grateful she was that people like us come to adopt the babies. She told us that we were very lucky, and so was Lily. We agreed! Now we are back at the hotel and completely exhausted. We have to go back tomorrow for 2 more treatments. One at 9:30 and again at 5:30. We also have an appointment at the consulate at 3:00 to take an oath. Antoher busy day. Now that this story has turned into a novel...here are our praises and prayer requests:

Praises:
1)That we took Lily to the doctor today rather than waiting until tomorow or until we got home. She will now be able to finish her treatments in time for us to fly home. Who knows what would have happened if we had waited.
2)That we got to meet Dr. Nong and for his kindness to Lily and to us and doing all that he can to help us.
3)For the families here and for all of you at home who are continually praying for us...we are more grateful than we can say.

Prayer Requests:
1)Please pray for healing for Lily...that she would return to complete health quickly, and that she is able to get some good rest tonight.
2)For Robert and I...that we would trust God in this situation and we will find comfort in His soverignty.

I feel much better about this than I did when we first got to the clinic. At least we now know what the problem is and are able to do something for her. Thank you again for your continued prayers...please keep them coming. We can use all of the prayers we can get.

We Have Access!

Ok, so for some reason I am able to access the blog today. First things first...we got our luggage! They finally delivered them to our hotel room this afternoon around 3:00 (it's Monday here). We were so excited, it was like Christmas morning going through them! They were supposed to be delivered yesterday, but the person who was supposed to bring them couldn't find them at the airport...good grief! Well, now they are here and all is well. Hopefully they'll all get home ok on Friday.

Things here are going so well. Lily is still having issues with daddy, but we are working on it. She had lots of fun playing with him today. It will be much easier, I think, once we get home and get settled in there. Lily had her medical appointment this morning. She did very well. We had to go to 3 different rooms. First a Dr. listened to her heart, checked her body to make sure she looked ok and measured her head circumference...17 inches. Then we went to another Dr. who checked her ears (ear wax build up but no infection...yeah!), checked her eyes and stuck a tongue depressor in her mouth. She didn't care for that too much but she did very well. Last was the nurse who checked her weight (15.7 lbs...much smaller than we expected), her length (I forget now...but she is tall!) and her temp (96.8). She hated all of that because they had to take her and she doesn't like being taken from me. But she was a trooper! Afterwards we got to go shopping on Shaiman Island. It is really nice there...so many shops full of cute baby things. They are all standing in the doorways just waiting for us new parents! Of course we got her a couple of new dresses and 2 pairs of shoes. She is so much fun to shop for!

The most exciting thing happened at lunch today...she fed herself for the first time! I'll post pictures below so you can see. Let me just tell you now...this girl LOVES watermelon! Hopefully I'll be able to continue posting. If not, Jenny has been so kind as to offer to continue if I can't...thank you Auntie Jenny! Enjoy the pictures of the most beautiful baby ever!:o)

(There are lots more pictures at http://www.pbase.com/robertsphotos/china_2007 and
http://www.pbase.com/robertsphotos/lily_in_china )

Lily practicing with the chopsticks.

Lily's favorite game...blowing raspberries!

Playing peek-a-boo with her Nai Nai.

Some of the families in our group waiting to see the Doctors.

Lily and Mommy playing while we wait.

Lily sitting all by herself on the famous red couch at the White Swan hotel. She usually cries when we sit her by herself. She was such a good girl!

Mommy, Lily, Daddy and Laura, Annalise and Michael...a very sweet couple in our travel group. We've been together for the whole trip...our girls are from the same orphange in Jiangxi.

Lao Lao, Mommy, Lily, Daddy and Nai Nai on the red couch.

Mmmmm....watermelon!

Say "Ahhhhhh!".

Lily feeding herself...such a big girl! (And a very proud daddy in the background!)

She is such a crack up!

She can't get enough!

They Found Them!

They Found Them!

I can't believe it! They found our lost suitcases. We got the call a few hours after we arrived in Guangzhou. You could have knocked me over with a feather. The representative that called said they were in Beijing and asked where we were staying. Robert told her we were no longer there and that he'd spent a great deal of time and money explaining very specifically our itinerary with the names and addresses of the hotels where we would be staying...didn't she have that information? Apparently that got lost with the suitcases! Anyway, he told her where we were and she said she would put them on a flight to Guangzhou that day, and we could come to the airport to pick them up. Um...excuse me? You lost my luggage, you need to bring it to me! She said they didn't have anyone here that could do that, but they would reimburse us for our travel expenses to get there. Robert explained to the woman that they needed to find someone and pay them to get it to us. She said in that case we wouldn't get it until the next day (today). Robert just laughed and told her, we've gone this long without it, we can wait one more day! So it's after 4:00 in the afternoon already and we are still waiting. Hmmmm. I'm sure they'll turn up here eventually.

On a sad note...one of the families traveling with us (a single mom named Linda who is traveling with her sister) lost her baby yesterday. She was not in the same province where we got Lily, so I have not gotten to know her, but apparently she received her baby on Monday and she was very sick. One of the women in her group is a Dr. and was able to give her some antibiotics. They saw signs of improvement, but yesterday the baby stopped breathing. They took her to the hospital but at that point it was too late and they were not able to revive her. I can't imagine how devastated Linda must be. She seems to be holding up ok...she came down to breakfast this morning and went on the sightseeing tour with us. I have no other details, but ask that you would please pray for her...pray for God to comfort her and help all of us to be the family in Christ she needs right now. There will be a memorial service here at the hotel in about an hour.

Lily is doing just fine. We are having so much fun with her. She is such a fun baby! She is still having a hard time with daddy. She is ok with him when I'm not around, but once she sees me, she wants nothing to do with him. When I am holding her, she's ok with him playing with her, so that's good. Yesterday was a little tough. She woke up from her nap and I think she forgot where she was and got scared. That didn't help things either! Today has been better. I just can't wait to get home so she will have a normal routine, wake up in the same bed every morning and we can all just really spend time getting to know each other.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures soon...if I can get access to the blog. Otherwise, I will have a TON to post when I get home!