Thursday, March 29, 2007

We got an update on Alyson!

Well, not exactly an update but we got answers to some specific questions we asked back in January when we first got her referral.

She has had her heart surgery!! The report is dated 3/28/07 and it says that she is still in the hospital but it doesn't say when the surgery actually was, just that it was "successful."
This is very exciting news but also so sad to know that she is in the hospital without a mommy or daddy :-(
Our agency assured us that the orphanage will have sent a caregiver to stay with her in the hospital and she will help with the care and feedings etc.
If her surgery has gone as it should then it is likely that that is the only surgery she will need. As much as we were prepared to have her surgery here in the US and go through all the worry and sleepless nights associated with it, it's a relief to know it is already done.

As for the less dramatic but still exciting details of the report...
She now weighs 19.8 pounds, she's 28.3 inches tall, and she has 2 teeth :-)
I plotted her growth on a Chinese growth chart and she is in the 50th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height. Sounds just perfect to us!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Terrible dream last night

I've been very jealous of all the other families that received updates on their children while they wait for travel approval so I think this dream I had last night is some kind of penance for jealousy.

I dreamt that we got an update on Alyson and it said that she is now 6 years old, is actually from Russia not China, she's 6'4" tall and she's autistic. I kept crying that I had wanted a child I could hold in my lap, not one that's 6 feet tall! There was a person from our agency with us in the dream and she kept apologizing that the child was actually from Russia and I was saying I don't care that she's from Russia, she's 6 feet tall! That's not right!!

Anyway, it was bizarre and I was soooo happy to wake up from that. I think I had strange dreams right before Andrew was born so maybe this is a sign that an actual update is on it's way or, even better, our LOA!
Keeping fingers crossed :-)

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Alyson's room

Because we're moving and we're not sure if it will be before or after we go get Alyson, we haven't put her room together yet. We haven't bought her crib yet but I did buy her bedding. Here's the online store photo:

I got a great deal on it on ebay. (It's from an ebay store so it's brand new :-)

Girl stuff!!

We're finally swimming in girly things in this house! Our wonderful neighbor, Marla, brought over this huge box of girl clothes. The picture doesn't do it justice as far as how much stuff is in this box. Most of it is size 18 month summer clothes which will be fine even if it's too big since we're moving to Texas and it's farily warm in the winter there too.



Of course Bailey had to check it out.

Our report from when Alyson was 7 months old says that she weighed 17 pounds at that time. She was most likely weighed with a couple layers of clothes on so we don't know how much she really weighed so it's hard to guess what she weighs now. Not suprisingly, Chinese children are usually a little more petite than Caucasion children. I've read stories from other parents that their Chinese children in the 13-16 month age range were wearing American clothes as small as 6-9 month size. Good news is, I hear the shopping in China is great! So if we're totally wrong about her size, we'll just have to buy some clothes there! :-)

Friday, March 09, 2007

About Alyson's heart

Alyson has an 8.5 mm VSD. That is a ventricular septal defect-a hole in her heart. From our extensive research and questioning of health care professionals, it seems that 8.5mm would be classified as a moderate to large hole.

Here are a couple links to websites that can explain a VSD much better than I can:

http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/health/heart-encyclopedia/anomalies/vsd.htm

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=11066

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/ventricular-septal-defect/DS00614

We do not know at this time if Alyson will require surgery once she is home. Some VSDs close on their own or at least get small enough that she could just live with it. Even with a small hole though, if the heart is working too hard to compensate for it or the valves are getting weak and the chambers are getting enlarged, then surgery to repair the hole would be indicated.

Repair of a VSD entails open heart surgery with placement of a Gortex patch over the hole. Repair of atrial defects can frequently be done with a catheter procedure which is much less dramatic than open heart surgery but unfortunately that is not an option for Alyson since her defect is between the ventricles. Alyson's medical report indicates that she already has some enlargement of her heart and some regurgitation in 3 of the 4 valves (that means they are a little floppy and leaky). The valves could improve with growth alone but should definitely improve following surgery to repair the VSD. If one or more of the valves has become too weak to improve because of delay in repair of the VSD then she may require a valve replacement at some point. We're hoping that we can avoid that.

It is possible that Alyson has already had surgery in China but we have not received an update and may not ever. It is not entirely unusual for a family to not find out about further medical treatment that has been done for the child until they arrive in China. I have read about a family that was preparing for their new son from China to have surgery soon after his arrival in the USA but when they went to get him in China and were with him in the hotel room for their first night as a family, they removed his clothes to give him a bath and noticed a 6 inch scar on his chest! He had already had his open heart surgery and NO ONE said anything. The family had asked the nanny that handed them their son earlier that day how his health/heart was and she just nodded and smiled and said it was good. It didn't occur to her to mention that he had surgery 2 months ago. That seems crazy to Americans but the Chinese view the flow of information very differently.

The Chinese orphanage directors and staff care very much for the babies and would not hesitate to secure needed medical care including surgery for the children if they need it. It just doesn't seem to be a priority to them to update anyone on changes in medical status. We don't know if it's that the orphanage doesn't update the CCAA or if they do update the CCAA but the CCAA doesn't pass the information along to the agency that holds the child's file.

We requested an update 6 weeks ago today and our agency is trying to get one for us but the orphanage and/or the CCAA are under no obligation to provide an update if the information we have is less than a year old. Our information is from September 2006. :-(

The good news is that the Chinese doctors do an excellent job of repairing heart defects. Most of the US pediatric cardiologists that so follow-up echocardiograms on these kids have said that the repairs look great.

So at this point, our motto remains the same: Prepare for the worst but hope for the best! :-)

Thursday, March 08, 2007

So what are we waiting for?

If it was up to me, I'd be on a plane tomorrow to go get her but I'm not in charge.

What we are waiting for next is our Letter of Acceptance (LOA). This form will come from the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) and it basically will indicate that everything is in order and asks us if we accept our referral. We have to sign it and send it back then the CCAA will work on our Travel Approval (TA).

As far as timing, it's hard to say when we will get our LOA. Because our dossier was already out of review in the non-special needs process at the time we sent our Letter of Intent (3/2/07) we could in theory see our LOA fairly quickly (1-2 months). There are many families that have waited many months for their LOA/TA but most of them sent their dossiers later than us so it's hard to say if there's a real pattern to it. People who know me know how analytical I am and how desparately I try to figure out patterns and timing but in this case it's a bit random so I have to just be patient.

It appears that for most people the time frame from LOA to TA is about 3-4 weeks and the time from TA to actually getting on a plane to China is anywhere from 7 days to 6 weeks. Most people will have at least 2 weeks notice and there is some flexibility in travel plans once the travel approval has arrived. This is a good thing since we are moving to Texas the end of June.

As soon as we get travel approval I'm going to want to go get her, I don't want her to have to wait any longer because of our time constraints, but the reality is we cannot travel during the few weeks around our move. That's just how it is and it will all work out in the end :-)

So cross you fingers for an LOA early April, TA early May and getting on a plane late May!!
Ok, it's not likely but there's nothing wrong with dreaming!! :-)

Where in the world is Alyson?




Alyson is in Kunming which is the capital city of the southern province of Yunnan, China.

Alyson is either residing in the Kunming City Social Welfare Insitute (orphanage) or is in foster care associated with that orphanage. According to the only information we have on her, from age 7 months old, she was in the orphanage but that could have changed at any time.

This is the Kunming City SWI:

Kunming means "eternal spring" so supposedly they have mild temperatures year round but summer is their rainy season.
Just a side note, right now the restaurant chain PF Changs is featuring a menu called "Flavors of Yunnan." I copied this info from their website:
The Yunnan Province is the most southwest province in China and is bordered by Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Tibet as well as the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Guizhou and has one of the most diverse ethnic populations in China. The region has a wide range of weather conditions from snow-capped mountains and glaciers in the north to a mild spring climate in the central part to tropical rainforests in the south. The diversity of culture and climate is reflected in Yunnan cuisine. Some of the most unique foods found in the Yunnan Province include its famous cured Yunnan Ham (similar to Spanish Serrano Ham), cheese and dairy products, numerous varieties of mushrooms and chilies as well as fermented items, hearty noodles and pu’er tea. The Flavors of Yunnan menu is reflective of the unique ingredients found in this province.
The passage mentions the ethnic diversity of Yunnan province. When most Americans picture a Chinese person with typical Chinese features they are thinking of a member of the Han majority. But just as other ethnic groups have variations so do the Chinese. I'm not talking about obvious minority differences like Caucasion vs. Hispanic, It's more like within a Caucasion population there is a difference between someone of Irish descent vs. German descent.
Yunnan Province has the largest number of ethnic minorities in China, at least 25 recognized groups.
Several people have commented on Alyson's dark coloring and her more round eyes. Her features are similar to other babies from Kunming and we are pretty sure she is from an ethnic minority but I don't know how we'll ever know for sure which one. We'll never be able to tell from the 3 little pictures we have of her but hopefully as she grows up we can do more research and narrow it down for her.

About Alyson's name

Alyson's Chinese name, Qian Wen, was given to her, as far as we know, by her orphanage staff. There are a few different Chinese characters for both Qian and Wen so it has taken us a little bit of research to figure out what her name means.

Here are the actual characters for her version of Qian Wen:

From what we can gather, the first character (Qian) means delicately pretty and the second character (Wen) means beautiful clouds. We originally thought it meant refinement or culture but that character is slightly different.
By the way, QianWen is pronounced "Chee-ann One"
About her English name...
We chose Alyson because I've always loved that name and the potential nickname Aly. My very best friend growing up was named Alyson. We've lost touch over the years but I have wonderful childhood memories of her and think of her often still.
We chose Mary as a middle name in honor of Michael's mom. He was just a toddler when she passed away but she is still very loved and much talked about in the family.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

I'm Back to Blogging!

Ok, Ok, I'll update my blog! :-)
I've been getting a little bit of grief for not posting anything since May of 06. I guess that is a long time! Sorry about that.

A lot has happened since our last post. No one wants to hear the boring stuff so I'll get straight to the good news:

It's a Girl!!

We received a suprise phone call from the waiting child department of our agency on January 22 saying that they had a file for a little girl that we may want to review. I was stunned. We said we would absolutely like to see her file! This is the inital information we got:

Name: Guan Qian Wen
DOB: February 4, 2006
Residing in Kunming Social Welfare Institute, Yunnan Province
Special need: Congenital heart defect (VSD)

Once we received her file via fedex the next day we sent it to a pediatric cardiologist in Massachucetts that re-translated her echo report for us and gave us an opinion on her prognosis. We also had her file reviewed by several nurses and doctors at Children's hospital in Denver. Our champion, Natasha made anyone and everyone at her hospital look at it and give an opinion !! (We owe you Natasha ;-)

In the end we decided that we could not only manage her health needs but she is perfect for our family and we think we are the perfect family for her.

It took us a few weeks to get a homestudy addendum and a new letter of application for China notarized, certified, and authenticated. We sent those as well as our official Letter of Intent to our agency on 2/23/07. Our agency sent it to China on 3/2/07.

Only other adoptive parents care about all those details. Here's what everyone else wants to see. Her picture!


Introducing Alyson Mary QianWen....


These pictures were taken when she was 7 months old. She is now 13 months old so we can only guess what she looks like today. We have requested updated info and photos from the orphanage but we may not receive any.
I'll post more info later!