The road to Tyson, Part 4

We left off with the locking of Tyson's file--Chang Li Chen's file. I am going to give the short version of teh next 2 months.

We had both decided that as long as we got positive news from the doctor, it was a go. So we talked to a doctor who specializes in looking at adoption files. It was a 12:30 conference call. I was at school and arranged with our fabulous, wonderful PE teacher (who also happens to be a great friend!) to take my students for an earlier PE time. Dan was sleeping from working graveyard shifts. 12:30 on the dot, the call came. First, the doctor thought he looked great! She knew a lot about cl/cp, as she had also done a similar adoption. With that said, she was very concerned about his measurements, particularly his head measurement. This little peanut was not even on the US/CDC growth charts in height, weight, and head circumference. This could lead to some problems down the road. Also, in his pictures he was propped with pillows, and we figured that he was 11 months old. But he had also just had surgery. Did this mean he had a serious developmental delay, or was he just behind due to his rough start in life and would get back on track? The hard part was we weren't quite sure when the measurements were taken, but we figured it had to be between 8 and 9 months of age. His lip repair was at 10 months, so what the doctor wanted was updated measurements and to find out if he was walking yet.

So this was not what we expected. We had expected a clear "YES" or "NO". Not a "Let's get more info..." Well, that ended up not being so easy. First we tried a service to get the info, but of course, early October was "Harvest Festival" so all was shut down for the week. I waited a few days into the next week, and I finally emailed this service, and the email back said that the orphanage would not reveal any information. I called the agency in hysterics. How can we make an informed decision with no information? On one hand, there was medical risk. On the other hand, any referral is going to have risk, and there were too many good things about little Li Chen. First, his sn was one we knew we could handle. Second, he was sponsored by Half the Sky, which means he has experienced love and hopefully attachment and bonding. Third, in his pictures you could see him interacting with people, and most of his paperwork showed a child who was on track, other than not sitting up unattended. But my own daughter, who was one month premie, was not sitting up without a pillow until 8 months.

So my agency asked CCAA for updated measurements and asked some questions. We knew we many not get the info in a timely manner, and if not, we may have to pull our LOI. I was a wreck. I walked around with this heavy heart and guilt. Maybe we shouldn't have put in our LOI. We thought he was fine, but now we didn't know.

Finally, on October 31st, we got the update. He had grown, and he was now bearing weight on his legs and walking holding onto things. For a 16 month old in an orphanage, this is very typical, so we very happy about that. His length/height was now on the chart, but weight and head circ was not, but he had made growth and was closing the gap to getting on the charts. We forwarded this on to the IA doctor. She still was hesitant about his head size, and the following week she sent me a huge article about people with microcephally, which just means that a person has a headsize that is more than 2 Standard Deviations from the norm. In plain terms, it means a small head, and mental retardation, low IQ, etc... can go along with this condition. I just thought he was proportionally small, so he'd be OK. Some doctors believe this to be true, others do not. They believe small head=small brain.

I began locating blogs, asking questions, searching yahoo groups, and anything else that would help us make our decision. Is he OK? Will he be OK? Could this get any worse? We prayed, our chuch connect group prayed, our friends prayed. Our prayer was for God to make it clear whether or not we were supposed to adopt Li Chen. And everyday, God did not make it clear, and we were more confused and frustrated.

And then one day, it was clear. Until the next post...(I told you it was a LONG story!)