Visitation Day 3

Today was a great visit with the baby. We’re allowed to visit her once a day for 2 hours, but our translator is usually able to stretch it to 2.5 or 3 hours. We arrive at noon, just as she is waking from her morning nap and getting ready to eat lunch. The last few days they’ve allowed us to feed her when we arrive. I do not like this task. She doesn’t like lunch. It looks like it would be nutritious, but atrocious. She gags it and spits it out, and I can’t say I blame her. Basically it starts with a bowl of soup. The soup is always vegetable-based. The first day we fed her, it was onions and carrots and tomatoes. Today it was beets, turnips and carrots. There is so much of it, at least a cup and a half. Getting her to eat this is about a joke, since she is so little; most of it just runs back out of her mouth. Then we move on to the meat puree and mashed potatoes. There is another cup of each of these. So much food for a little stomach! Lunch is finished off with fruit juice in a ceramic teacup. It’s not pure juice; it’s the water from boiling dried fruit. She gulps it out of a teacup like nobody’s business.

The workers shovel the food in, holding the bowl directly under her chin and not stopping for a second. There are only one or two caregivers to feed six to eight babies, so time is very important. She hates it at lunchtime, but I’m told she eats better at dinner, which is oatmeal, or eggs, something better than the soup! So when we arrive and they ask if I want to feed her, I try to decline. I hate the way they force us to force her to eat. But normally they go ahead and give us the bowls, probably because they appreciate the help. Today she was not having any of it. I managed to get a couple of bites in her, and then I gave up and let her drink all the fruit juice. I’m sure I upset the caregivers, who expect the kids to eat all that food every day. But I couldn’t do it. She was gagging; she hated it, poor girl. So feeding, it is an experience.

I snuck a sippy cup in today with watered-down juice. She has no sucking reflex at all; she’s been on solids since her first tooth, and she drinks from a regular cup, not a bottle or sippy. We’re working on her tongue and sucking ability. It took her a while to figure out the cup, but once she did, she was all over it. She learns really quickly. We’ve been working with her on clapping, and now she does it and gives us a funny look, like she can’t figure out why she’s doing it, but it makes these big people cheer, so whatever.

You should see her look at Keith. She studies his face for minutes at a time, rubbing his face, feeling his eyes, checking out his whiskers. She loves his glasses, too. She must think he is a pretty strange creature, the way she checks him out.

We got the remainder of her medical file translated and off to Vanderbilt today. We’re waiting to hear back from them. I’m not a doctor, but I didn’t see anything too scary. I’m anxiously awaiting their response, and if all is well, I’ll spend another two hours uploading pictures onto this website so that everyone can meet this baby. I wish I could upload more than just pictures, though. Photos don’t really do her justice. Yeah, she’s pretty cute in pictures. But the best parts of her are her big teeth, her tiny nose and the way she wrinkles it, her smoker’s voice, her huge mouth, her receding hairline, just how funny she is in general. And tiny, she is tiny! She is wearing 6-12 month outfits. Everything I bought before we came here was size 18-24 months. I brought one package of 12-month onesies with us; I’m going to try those on her tomorrow to gauge her size. But small, she is definitely small. Another first for us, a small baby!

Today at the baby house, another family from New York visited with their new little girl while we were there. They brought along their two older boys, ages 5 and 3. Little girl was wide-eyed, just staring at the big kids. She wanted to get in the mix with them pretty bad. This bodes well for her future as little sister to the crazy boys at home. Hopefully she’ll feel right at home being dog-piled by Owen and Ari. It’s funny to think of Ari, my baby, as a big brother. I miss those two boys like mad!