Doctor's Appointment

On Tuesday, we made the long journey downtown to Children's Hospital at the DMC to have the kids fully evaluated medically. The appointment was at 9am and we had to leave this house at 7:20 to make it there on time. Which sucked, because we had to wake the kids up early, and they were having their best night of sleep yet. Also, on the way down, Tatiana completely upchucked all over herself in the car, so that was pleasant to deal with. Half digested yogurt and bananas, yuck. :(

We made it to Children's and got in with the doc about 9:20, I think. The front desk seriously didn't know how to run our private, excellent health insurance, because I'd be willing to bet all they deal with is freaking Medicaid (the Adoption Clinic is run out of one of the general pediatric clinics there, and the clientele seemed, let's say, ghetto fabulous).

The appointment lasted 2 hours. The doctor was very thorough, as she should be. She asked us every question under the sun, measured them a ton, and gave them full physicals. She was generally pleased with the state of their health, and with the things we've been doing with them. She also has twin sons adopted from Kazakhstan, so she totally understands what we're going through. Cola is in good shape overall, he's just tiny. He's not even on the growth chart. He is 2 now, and is the size of an average 12 month old here. Little lady Tania is good sized, but has issues like decayed teeth, a lazy eye, and something called funnel chest/pectalis, which means her chest, right in between where her breasts will be, is concave. This will most likely resolve itself, but it may not. They are most likely also developmentally delayed, and I have the school district working on coming out to evaluate them. They are certainly emotionally stunted. We're working on that.

Also, they had a ton of blood work ton. She took it like a rock star, but he screamed like a banshee. It was awful. It was 1:45 by the time we got out of Children's. We also have to do a urinalysis and a fecal test (3 times for the poop) to check for parasites. Fun for Heather and Brian. But these guys need to be checked for every little thing.

So, that's what happened with the doctor's appointment. Things are rolling. I honestly think taking them to medical appointments and getting out of this house may help our mood!

Thank You All...

For the tremendous support I got from my last blog update. To all of you who emailed me, or Facebooked me, sorry I haven't replied in person, but this blog entry is hard enough to get done. All of you that wrote sent lovely messages of support and offers to call you. Trust me, I may take some of you up on that at some point. Right now, I'm calling people who've specifically been through an adoption process, because they have the most insight into the specific things we're dealing with. I'm having a very bad day today, so writing this short blurb hopefully will help me stay sane.

The sleeping is not going much better, but at least the jet lag is over, I think. The white noise helps them go to sleep somewhat, but it only lasts 90 minutes on my iPod, so Brian ordered a white noise machine that we can play all night. I think that may help. They both are still waking repeatedly, which could go on for months. Basically, our poor babies have never had anyone comfort them in the night, and now that's all they want for a while until they realize that we'll always be there if they need us. Nicholas is SO hard to get to sleep, and the stroller is the only thing that works fairly consistently. So, we're going to go with that. We have to meet him where he is. At least Tatiana hasn't had any more night terrors, but she thrashes and wails in her sleep. I think she's having nightmares. Poor thing. We're trying to remember what these babies have been through in their lives, which, at 3 and a half and 2, is more than most of us will ever have to endure. But, its still difficult to deal with when we're less than our best.

Food is also a huge issue. If they see food, they will scream and wail for it, even if they ate 5 minutes ago. Food preparation around them is a difficult situation. I think they've been hungry quite a bit in their lives and now are just craving food until they explode. This is common and takes time to subside. We've had to bungee cord my pantry shut so they don't get into stuff.

We do see improvement and we hold on to that. Her tantrums are getting better, as she seems to be getting more of what's expected of her behavior wise. A huge problem we have is sharing/sibling rivalry, but that's normal for any siblings. It'll take time. Also, we've had them since January 18, and we can already see them filling out. They are getting little bellies on them! We love that, since we could scarily see their ribs A LOT when they arrived to us. I think T will always be tall and thin, which is fine by me! I wish N would grow height wise a bit. We have the full eval at Children's Hospital downtown on Tuesday and we'll see how that goes. I think they're in pretty decent shape overall. Next step will be getting T treatment for her lazy eye. I talked to the Adoption Medicine specialist today and she was very encouraging. She has twins from Kazakhstan and she reassured me that everything we're dealing with is normal and will subside, but it could take months. So, we have to be in it for the long haul.

Thanks for the support and encouragement everyone. We know that in the near future we'll hopefully be able to look back at this and go, "Wow, that sucked, but we made it through." Hopefully, that's sooner rather than later!