Wow, I can't believe that it has been almost a month since I have posted. So much has happened in the past few weeks. Lets see....
We met with Dr. K to go over AnNa's file. There was not too much that we didn't already know. She did explain that the heart condition does looks as though it was misdiagnosed. Her heart does not look bad at all. The cardiologist reviewed the paperwork and believes that she won't need any treatment. We won't know until we have her evaluated here, but it looks good. There was not enough information about her cleft palate to determine what level it is, but we can work with that.
Dr. K explained that the paperwork was a little confusing with the dates. She believes that her birthdate is probably close to accurate. It looks as though the evaluation where she had 7 teeth was not completed when she was 2 months old, but rather when she was 14 months old. That makes much more sense.
After the appointment we informed the adoption agency that we would like to pursue AnNa. They locked her file for us meaning that we have 6 months to get all of our paperwork completed and submitted to China.
It's hard to actually believe that we know who are daughter will be. This is such a foreign thing, picking out a child and knowing that you will have her with you eventually, but she will be living in an orphanage thousands of miles away until all of the red tape is completed. She doesn't even know I exist yet. Frustrating and exciting at the same time.
I did a little research trying to find any information that I could about the orphanage where she lives. The only thing I have found so far is from over a year ago. A small group from a ministry visited her orphanage and visited with the children and staff. There were a few pictures of children in their rooms. The room looked like the one that AnNa was pictured in, but they probably all look the same. The room looked dirty. It broke my heart to hear that they did not have any cleft bottles to feed the children with cleft palate/lips with. One baby was so bad that one of the nannies rigged up an NG tube with rubber tubing and fed her through it. Thankfully the visitors were able to provide a few special bottles to the nannies and taught them how to use them. My baby was most likely there during that time. How had they been feeding her? We don't know how bad her cleft is or how she does with eating. It makes me want to leave for China right now and snatch my baby up. In the 2 pictures we have of her, she looks like she is a nice size so hopefully she is doing well. I hate that there is no way of knowing. I understood going into this that we would know very little and that it was a long process. That doesn't change the fact that I don't like not knowing and waiting though. It also doesn't stop the worrying.
When I was little, I remember my Dad always praying "a hedge of protection" around all of us kids. I didn't really understand what that meant and thought it sounded kind of funny. For some reason, I always pictured a hedgehog running around a little square of bushes with me standing inside the square. It is such a silly picture from the mind of a child. I could never understand why my Dad prayed for a hedge to surround me. It didn't seem to me that a hedge would be very good protection.
One day I googled where that statement came from and surprised to find that it is from Job 1. God and Satan were talking and Satan, referring to Job, asked God if He had put a hedge of protection around him. Apparently in Bible times, stone walls were not a feasible option for keeping predators from homes and livestock as it was too costly and the walls would have to be too high. Thorn bushes, on the other hand, were easy to grow around things and were the perfect deterrent to predators. A thorn hedge is an appropriate metaphor for the protection God gives us when we ask. I LOVE this metaphor now. I now pray for a strong hedge of thorns to surround my baby and keep out any illness or intended harm!
There is so much more that has happened in the past month, but at 1:30am, it will have to wait for another time.
