Our first week with Samuel

Our first week with Samuel was spent with him in the hospital.  It was a very busy week.  I had to work three days that week, and James had his usual Monday through Friday schedule.  We both tried to be at the hospital at least once a day to feed him.  Samuel was having a difficult time taking a bottle, and we wanted to be there as much as we could so the nurses could coach us through feeding times. If I had to work, James and I would leave for the hospital around 8 pm, and I'd stay there until midnight. James would feed Samuel at 8:30, and I would feed him at 11:30. It made for some late nights. I woudn't get home until 1 AM.  At this point, our families still didn't know about Samuel. After all the problems we had trying to adopt internationally, we wanted to wait until Samuel was home with us before we told our families.

We had several things had to get done that week:

• get the nursery in workable order
• choose a pediatrician
• meet with our attourney
• find a rocker for the nursery
• get an infant car seat

I am really pleased with the rocker that we I found.  I had been looking at Pottery Barn's upholstered rockers, and was seeing $$$$.  I was determined to find something cheaper that was comfortable and durable.  A children's furniture ctore opened near us not too long ago, and I'd never been in there. I decided to check it out before shelling out way too much at Pottery Barn.  I told one of the sales ladies that I was looking for a rocker, and she told me that it took 4-6 weeks to get them in. That wouldn't work! Our son was already here.  I explained our situation, and she showed me three floor models that she could sell.  I bought one of them for $400 under the budget James had given me. James brought it home in his truck that afternoon, and one of our neighbors helped him get it set up in the nursery.

Some of our good friends gave us some necessary items, like clothes, diapers, and wipes to get us started. On Wednesday that week, we found out that Samuel was going to be discharged on Friday.  A couple of our neighbors jumped into to action and they left a big basket of clothes, bottles, formula, diapers, wipes, and toys on our doorstep.

 Our basket of goodies from our neighbors

 James sanitizing bottles

 We made plans for Samuel to be discharged after I got off work on Friday.  And no, I was not much use at work that day!  We began making phone calls to our families on the way home from the hospital.  Samuel is the first grandchild on both sides of our famillies, so needless to say everyone was very excited!

 Getting discharge instructions from Samuel's nurse practioner, who was also adopted.

 Sameul's first car ride. He is covered with a blanket that my mom - his Nana made.  She gave it to us some time ago.

Finally at home with Daddy, in our new rocker.

It's a Boy!

I know many of you have been praying for us through all the drama we've experienced in our adoption process.  Those prayers have finally been answered! We switched to the domestic infant adoption program with our agency in December, and we have some wonderful news to share!

At 3:38 pm on Friday 2/3/12, James called me and asked if I had seen the message from our agency about a new cold call situation. I was at work, and I had not seen it. I was on my way to the hospital to deliver medications to a transplant patient. I asked him to read the post to me. It was about a newborn baby boy right here in the St. Louis area. (FYI - A "cold call" is when the birthmom has no contact with the adoption agency prior to the child's birth. She contacts the agency soon after the child is born.)

On my way to the hospital, I prayed and asked God to let my heart and James' heart be in agreement if this baby was to be part of our family. After I was finished at the hospital, we decided to ask for more information on the case. By the time my shift was over, we had received the second email. We talked things over that night after dinner, and we decided to proceed. I sent the social worker a text message at 9:42 pm saying that we wanted to be considered for that child.

Saturday morning (2/4/12), James and I were getting ready to go to the YMCA.   At 9:58 AM we got a call from our agency telling us that we had been chosen to parent this little boy! Three of the social workers that have been walking down this road with us, and praying for us were on the phone - they all wanted to be able to deliver this long awaited news! It just did not seem real.  After spending almost three years trying to adopt a child from Ethiopia, our son was born 30 minutes from our home. My head started swimming.  There was so much to be done before we brought this baby home. The nursery was a mess. The furniture was partially taken apart and none of it was in the right place. We didn't have an infant car seat. We didn't have diapers, wipes, or bottles. We needed a name! We didn't have a single boy name picked out.We made plans to meet our social worker and the hospital at 2 pm so we could meet our baby. I went on to the YMCA, hoping that getting some time in on the elliptical would help me think clearly.  (It helped, but not much. Ha!)

While we were getting ready to go to the hospital, we talked about a name.  We threw several options around, and we were able to make a tentative decision.  We left for the hospital and prayed on the way there.























We spent four hours at the hospital with our little man that day. We both fed him, and changed his diaper.  By the next day, we had decided on a name -

Samuel Stephen

Samuel is after James' maternal grandfather.  His name is Carl, but he is known as Sam to many. He was the youngest of five children, and his momma was out of baby names when he was born.  His still didn't have a name by his second day of life. His siblings started asking their mom what they were going to name the baby.  She said -"Anything but Sam."  Well, siblings being siblings, they started calling him Sam.  He is 85 years old, and he is still known as Sam.  Little Samuel, may you have the long life, devotion to God, and wisdom that your Great-Grandfather has had.

Stephen is after my dad and after Samuel's Godfather.  My dad has a kind heart, and he is ever ready to tell someone about Jesus.  I've heard him tell telemarketers that they need Jesus. Part of his speech that he gave at my rehearsal dinner was the Gospel.  He also enjoys entertaining the kids at church - Samuel, I bet the first time you met Santa it will be with your Grandpa dressed up playing the part. Early in our adoption process, we had to name a guardian for our future child. We prayed about it, and the same two people kept coming to our minds - James' youngest cousin Stephen and his wife Elizabeth.  They prayed about it too, and they agreed.  I was at a St. Louis Blues Hockey game when Stephen called me to tell that he and Elizabeth wanted to be our child's Godparents. Stephen has an adventurous spirit, a heart for the Gospel, and the willingness to serve God and follow him where He calls. He and Elizabeth went to Kenya on a dental mission trip this past summer.  Samuel, may you value obedience to Jesus above all, may your tongue be a quick to speak of Jesus as these two men, and may your feet be swift to follow the call of Jesus wherever He may take you.

Samuel, people all over the world have been praying for you. People all over the US, friends in Canada and Ethiopia.  When we started our adoption process, we thought we'd be adding a little brown-skinned girl from Ethiopia to our family.  After suffering through four failed referrals Ethiopia, we just didn't know why God did not see fit to add one of those little girls to our family.  He knew all along when you would be born and that you were meant to be our son.

"For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him."

1 Samuel 1:27 (ESV)

Thanks be to God from whom all blessings flow!

Adoption Update: Not what we'd hoped for

I have not written much about our adoption situation since we returned from Ethiopia in July.  Here's a run down of what has happened over the last few months:

1. Our agency did investigations on two of the children that we had been able to meet while we were in Ethiopia. 
2. After receiving the results of the investigations, we accepted a referral for one of the children, an eight mo. old girl.
3. We had to re-do our dossier. Our first one was about to expire. (Dossiers are good for 2 yrs in Ethiopia.) This took about 6 weeks.
4. We found out in early September that we had been assigned a court date of Nov. 15th.  In early October, we booked our flights.
5. We told our parents about our travel plans on 10/30, but those plans were going to unravel 5 days later.
6. Last Friday while I was at work, James called me and said our social worker wanted to have a conference call with us.  I was tied up and could not talk, so I asked James to talk with her. I expected that the news would not be good, and feared that it had something to do with the birthmom's court appearance, which had taken place earlier that day.
7. I called James when I was able to, and my fears were correct. The birthmom testified that she wished to parent the child who had been referred to us. Our fourth failed referral.
8. Yesterday we informed our agency that we want to withdraw from the Ethiopia program. We are considering pursuing domestic adoption, but we have not made any firm decisions in that regard yet.

James and I have been put through an emotional hell this past year. I did not want to go to church on Sunday. It was Orphan Sunday, and I was not up to hearing people sing the praises of adoption. So, we stayed home. I feel like God has been playing a game with us. There have been so many things that have happened along the way that made us feel encouraged to adopt from Ethiopia. Such us:

• Learning that James and my birthdays both fall on Ethiopian holidays.
• Our original dossier got hung up at our agency's office and was sent to Ethiopia about a month later than it should have been sent. It was sent on March 5, 2010 - which was the birthdate of the first baby who was referred to us. (She passed away less than three months after we received the referral for her.)
• Learning that we have a neighbor who does works in Ethiopia and travels there once or twice a year.

I don't know why God put the desire to adopt from Ethiopia in our heart if He knew that He had no plans to fulfill that desire. All I can say about that are that His ways are not our ways.

We learned several things along the way about the adoption process that I wish we'd known before we got heavily involved with the program:

•  Most of the children available for adoption are not orphans in the way that we think. Most of them have one birth parent living. I know this is not true of every child, but it is true of most. All four children who were referred to us had a living mother, and I know of many families who have been able to meet their child's birthparent while they were in Ethiopia.
• The birthparent has the right to claim custody of the child up until their appearance in court in Addis.  This is not just a formality, and the judge will honor in the birthparent's wish to parent. The birthparent's court date is typically 1-2 weeks before the adoptive families' court date, so your travel/adoption plans may get thrown out the window a week before you were planning on leaving for court.
• There is probably no way to know your child's HIV status for sure if they are under the age of 18 months. Yes, the little babies will be tested for HIV, but the tests that are commonly used in Ethiopia for HIV are not 100% accurate in children under the age of 18 months.
• Children under the age of two year will not be screened for TB. TB is one of the most common causes of death in Ethiopia, and I was baffled to learn that kids under the age of two will not be screened for it. They will be given a chest x-ray, if they exhibit signs of respiratory illness, but in our experience TB is not accurately diagnosed. The first child we were referred died from TB, after she had been treated for pneumonia for several weeks. 
• Ethiopia does not have a good system in place to keep track of records regarding previous relinquishments by families. Let's say that a mom relinquishes a child for adoption and that child is adopted by a family in the US. Same mom gets pregnant a year later and wants to relinquish that child as well. The family in the US who has the first child has to be contacted to given the option to adopt the new sibling.  This is how we lost our third referral.

 I don't know if we would have changed our minds about adopting from Ethiopia had we known all those things, but it still would have been nice to know these things before we had spent over a year in the program.

Thank you for your prayers, condolences, and encouragement. We are not sure what our next steps will be at this time. We ask that you give us the same courtesy that you'd give someone who had four miscarriages in less than a year's time. We are not up for a lot of questions about adoption/children right now.

Google Voice: FAIL

Guess what this message was about:

Hey staff. This is bag. It's Monday afternoon. I wanna know if it's about 530 6 o'clock. But anyway, if you don't need to call me back tonight to Kathy automatic kind of we could set the Spencer's Isaac starting out the on the clock okay about automatic interest not house up to centers are so I just never the. Why so I'd appreciate it if you can work. I know I have. If you have the automatic at. If you lock and if you don't like a block and a half and we'll get some pretty soon. Just put on the networks them a call me when you can. Love you. Bye bye.

That was someone wanting to know what kind of automatic soap dispensers we use.  Google didn't catch the word "soap" even one time, and it was on the voice message several times.

Google Voice: FAIL

Another incoherent transcription from Google Voice:

Hey Stephanie, Indiana, which, I was calling. I know that totally last minute, but we decided that we might have people over. Not my we're having people over. This West card in this afternoon at 3 And I know that your E getting all but I want to tell you also that Madeline we're gonna be there so I thought I might. Sister, I'm for you guys come to you. So, anyway, give me a text or give me a call. Would love to have you guys over, talk to you later. Bye. 

So, what was this missed call about? It was an invitation to go to someone's house and watch the Cardinal's game on TV.

Daisy turned 10 this year.

In August, we celebrated 9 years with our Daisy.  She was about a year old when we brought her home from the Human Society, so we think she is about 10 years old.  She given us a few worries this year, which culminated in her having a liver biopsy early this summer.  Her liver enzymes had been running high for over a year, and we'd done a lot of testing on her.  I wrote about what tests we'd had done and finding out what she did not have here: What's ailing Daisy?

After her liver biopsy, we found out that she has a benign condition called Vacuolar Hepatopathy.  I had never heard of the disorder before.  Basically her liver cells are getting clogged up with fat and metabolic wastes. She's taking two medications for it. One is a liquid that we can squirt on her food and the other is a chewable tablet that she has to be coaxed into taking.  We are really thankful that she doesn't have a life-threatening condition. She's not had any symptoms of illness.

From her behavior, it is hard to believe that she is 10. She is still very active, and she loves to play with Lily. I still catch her dragging Lily across the floor by her tail.

Google Voice: FAIL

 Here's another jumbled up message that was transcribed by Google Voice:

HI This is a call. Call when that we surely miss phone call, from this offer and just want to see if I can answer any questions, you can call our toll free number back. At (888) ***-****. Again, this is better. Call on the the poll college, your college at (888) ***-**** sorry that we missed your call. Looking forward to speaking to you soon and have a great day. 

 I edited the call-back number that was left.  I had to listen to the voice mail to find out what this was about. I was trying to call a culinary school to order a gift-certificate for his birthday. No one aanswered when I called, and that was the message that I got when they tried to call me back.