Going home tonight!

It has not even been 24 hours since the surgery and Eliana is already feeling much better. Her gauze packing that was stitched to the roof of her mouth was removed this morning (not a fun process) and she has now been unhooked from the heart & O2 monitors. She is still tethered to her IV, but has been downgraded from morphine to Tylenol with codeine to keep the pain under control. She absolutely refuses to drink anything from a syringe (no surprise - I would bet money she would do it if she were the one who got to hold it and push the plunger); however, she is eating jello from our hands (a very messy project) and drank some liquid yogurt from a cup. We are not allowed to use a spoon, but she can sip from a cup and we can drop soft foods into her mouth. Predictably, she hates the 'no-no' arm restraints and gets very frustrated by them and with us for refusing to remove them. It is also annoying her that she can't properly use the sign language she has been learning. It may be just as well, as I am sure her first request would be "cracker" (which also means 'cookie' to her, but she can't have either one for 3 weeks). We are not looking forward to the restraints and dietary restrictions, but we are very much looking forward to hearing all the new sounds and words Eliana will be adding to her repertoire over the weeks an months to come. Thank you for the kind messages and all of the thoughts and prayers on Eliana's behalf. They are much appreciated!

Laura Beth
(looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight, hopefully)!

In recovery

The nurses are working hard to keep Eliana comfortable in the recovery
room. .She is sleeping now while sitting in my lap in a rocking
chair with her head on my chest. She looks a bit like a prize fighter
at the moment - big fat lips, etc. She has on her no-nos and a diaper
and blanket. The surgeon was very pleased with the results of the
sugery - he said everything went perfectly! We have a room and they
will move us when they feel she is ready. We are probably in for a
long night. At this point, we are planning on staying until Sunday.
We will wait and see how her pain levels are tomorrow evening.
Goodnight, Laura Beth

She's in the OR

Adam & I were both with her until she was asleep, which was about
4:40. They still needed to put in her IV and prep her. Surgery
should last around 3 hours, so hopefully one of us can update by 9 or
10pm. -LB

Delayed until at least 4:30

We were given the option to delay until next Friday, but we declined.
Poor Eliana has not eaten since late last night except for some juice
& Jello this morning. She is such a trooper. She just woke up from a
nap and instead of screaming for food & drink she is playing &
laughing with her Daddy. I am texting this post from my phone and
will try to update later. -LB

Surgery is today at 2pm!

Meet Eliana's surgeon, Dr. Murthy. When this article was written he was 29 years old, which means he is now the ripe old age of 31! He is great and we feel very comfortable that Eliana is in his capable hands today.

We will need to report at noon and stay a minimum of 24 hours from surgery, or until Eliana demonstrates that she will take in fluids. We will be able to stay with her until she is asleep and also when she wakes up in recovery. My mother is flying in on Saturday to stay for a week and help out and provide me with some additional emotional support, too. Thanks, Mom! :o

On Tuesday, Eliana had appointments with the entire Craniofacial team at Children's National Medical Center in DC. Adam had to travel on business and I am grateful to my mother-in-law, Charlotte, for coming along to lend a hand. It was a long day! Eliana met with 7 different professionals all in one day: a pediatric dentist, an audiologist, a speech-language pathologist, an ENT (ear, nose throat doctor), the chief of plastic & reconstructive surgery, a psychologist and a geneticist. Wow! It is great to have everyone in one place where they collaborate and can discuss each patient together to plan the best course of treatment. We are grateful to be in an area with a pediatric hospital, where everything is designed with young children and their parents in mind. Children’s National Medical Center (DC) was one of only eight children’s hospitals in the country named to The Leapfrog Group’s 2007 Top Hospitals. It was the only pediatric hospital selected from the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions to receive this designation.

I will spare you the details of all the appointments here, but will tell you that Eliana is afraid of anyone wearing a plastic face shield and that she does NOT like to be strapped down to a board to have ear wax removed (and who can blame her)? She does have all her teeth, though there are 2 growing in the cleft in her upper gumline and 2 pairs on the bottom that are fused together (2 teeth instead of 4). No cavities! Her overall dental outlook is good. Her hearing is below normal, but that appears to be due to fluid behind the eardrum. She will have tubes put in during her palate surgery and this should bring her hearing back up into the normal range. The speech & language pathologist was very impressed with how well Eliana is doing with her speech despite her cleft and acquiring a new language on top of that. She gave us some speech exercises to work on after surgery to help Eliana learn how to make consonant sounds and we will check back in a few months to see how she is doing and if/when we need to start speech therapy.

I don't know if I will have a way to post tonight from the hospital or not. I will do my best to update everyone quickly!

Please keep Eliana in your thoughts and prayers.

Love, Laura Beth

Eliana's surgery is scheduled...

Eliana will have her palate surgery on Friday May 30th. I will spend the night with her at the children's hospital and we should be able to bring her home on Saturday after the gauze packing is removed from the roof of her mouth. She will be on a soft food diet and need to wear "No-No's", arm restraints that keep her elbows straight to prevent her from putting her hands in her mouth to pick at her stitches, for the following 3 weeks. She is so independent about feeding herself and being a 'big girl' to do things for herself - I am sure that she will NOT be happy at all about the No-no's.

We should know more after her appointment this coming Tuesday with the whole craniofacial team at Children's National and I will try to fill in some details after that.

I hope everyone has a nice Memorial Day Weekend and for those of you that are out of school now, a great beginning to your summer!

Please keep Eliana and our family in your thoughts and prayers next weekend!

Laura Beth

Pics & Videos from Hong Kong 4/20-23

Hi! Yep, I am still alive and well in Virginia - just busy like crazy! Eliana is one ACTIVE toddler and there is no way to use the computer while she is awake. And I have typically been collapsing once I finally get her to bed. We had a few rough nights with her waking up every 3 hours or so, but she seems to be settled back into sleeping through the night. Nap time is erratic right now, so I am working on getting that more regular (that way maybe I can sneak in some blog time)!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day. It was certainly a very special one for me, as it was my first as the mother of two children, AND it was Ben's birthday, AND my mother was visiting from Florida! Also, on Saturday, my wonderful friends held a brunch in Eliana's honor so that some of my friends who hadn't had a chance to meet Eliana in person could do so. Or, as we would have said in the south, we had a "Sip & See". It was so much fun! Eliana thoroughly enjoyed herself and so did I.

I still have SO many pictures to share of our China trip and since we've been home. These are a bit out of order, but here our some from our last leg of the trip in Hong Kong. I still need to post 2 full days of Beijing as well, so keep checking back. I will get them all up eventually! (Hit your Refresh icon to restart slide shows)

20 April - Victoria Peak fun day: I highly recommend the playground at the top of the peak for toddlers. I also got some great gifts in a shop up there, on the second floor on the same side as the Starbucks.

21 April - Checking in to Disneyland Hotel & relaxing

22 April - Full day at Hong Kong Disneyland

Video of Eliana with robotic Pluto. By this time in the day, both the tights and adorable hair bow had come off, but the squeaky shoes are obviously still on! Baba is snoozing on and off on the nearby bench, or I am certain this toy would have flown home with us!

GeGe teasing MeiMei at Disneyland Hong Kong. How to burn off the last bit of energy from a toddler at Disneyland. It was getting a bit dark here. Ben was having a great time harrassing his sister!



23 April - Last day in Hong Kong
Our flight wasn't until after 6pm, so we had a character buffet breakfast at the hotel and spent a couple more hours in the park before heading out to the airport. We got to be 'test riders' on the new "It's a Small World" ride in Hong Kong before it opened - very cool!

Eliana had her first consulation with her surgeon, whom we REALLY like. She has her appointment with all the members of the craniofacial team at Children's National Medical Center in DC on May 27th and then we hope to have a date for her cleft palate surgery. She will spend one night in the hospital and then have 3 weeks of wearing arm restraints (so that she can't pick at her stitches) and only soft foods. That will be a very challenging time and I am sure Eliana will be very frustrated by the arm restrains since she is so independent about feeding herself. The sooner her palate can be closed the better for her speech development and her English acquisition. Since she can't make most consonant sounds with an open palate, it would be better to learn English with a closed palate instead of learning to pronounce everything incorrectly with an open palate and then having to un-learn that and re-learn the correct pronunciations. Hopefully having her surgery done promptly will minimize the amount of speech therapy she will need.

That's all for now. Check back for more pictures of our site-seeing in Beijing and also the 3 weeks since we've been home. Stay tuned!

Earthquake update

I am sure you have all read/heard about the devastatingly high death toll due to the earthquake in China by now. Thankfully, the families with my agency waiting for news on their Sichuan babies all got good news that their children are alive and well. The children are now sleeping in tents until their orphanage buildings can be inspected and repaired. Please continue to keep the people of China in your thoughts and prayers. -LB

Earthquake in China

Please pray for the people of China. There was a massive earthquake in Sichuan today and there are thousands dead and thousands more injured. At least 3 of my friends from my adoption agency are waiting to bring home their precious babies from the affected area and are waiting to get word that their babies are okay. Thank you!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355036,00.html

One month with Eliana!

Today marks the one 'monthiversary' of "Gotcha Day" - the day we finally met our sweet Eliana face to face and were able to hold her in our arms. What a difference a month makes! We have not been home quite 2 weeks yet, but Eliana has adjusted beautifully to her new home and family and we are adjusting to our new life together as a family with a very busy toddler. She has stolen all of our hearts - her smile lights up the whole house and her giggle is contagious. What a sweetie!

Today was a mama milestone for me, too. Adam left before sunrise on a day trip. Over the past week and a half I have relied on Adam heavily for the morning routine and tried to shower and dress before he leaves for work. Yesterday he also left early for a day trip and I was unable to get a shower all day (-yuck). Well, this morning, as usual, my sweet Ben gave me my morning wake up visit (yes, my teenage son wakes me up, not vice versa), I fed him breakfast and got him out the door at 6:45am to catch the bus. Then, something miraculous happened! I was able to drink two cups of coffee, check my email, shower (TMI alert - I actually got to shave both legs, pumiced my feet, and even completed my post-shower moisturization process), applied make-up, blew my hair dry, made my bed, and now I am posting to my blog. To some people, this may not seem very miraculous. In fact, most of my lady readers probably complete a similar routine every morning without really giving it a second thought. However, any woman who clearly remembers the first few weeks after giving birth or adopting a new addition to the family completely understands my utter joy in completing these seemingly mundane tasks. I feel like I could conquer the world!

In exactly 5 minutes I must wake up my sweet girl and we will eat breakfast together, or this wonderful daily rhythm I have going will be blown to smithereens. So, here are a couple of pictures of daily life for Eliana. You will see that she LOVES her kitty Bailey, and in fact, she thoroughly enjoys the kitty climbing/clawing apparatus (who needs an outdoor playset when you have a cat climber, really?), she loves shoes and accessories of all kinds, including her stacking rings, as you see below. Yes, that is a bow in her hair with her pajama top - placed there at her insistence (I don't recall why she doesn't have her PJ bottoms on at that point! I don't have photos of her with Tigger (the dog) yet, but they have also become fast friends and I think I may have to put Tigger on a diet because of all the 'extras' Eliana is tossing to him (sometimes inadvertently, and other times quite purposefully). [Refresh your screen to restart the slide show]

Have a great day!

Laura Beth

(Squeaky clean and ready to take on the day)

Pictures from April 16th

These pics are from our first day in Beijing - Wednesday April 16th. Adam gave the run down of what we did in this post, so I won't repeat it again here. You will see lots of refurbishment happening in preparation for the Olympic games, which start on August 8th at 8:00 (8/8/08 at 8 - 8 is a lucky number in China). Just hit your 'refresh' button to restart the slide shows. Enjoy!

Here are the family pics in Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City - the entwined trees in the gardens are a lucky spot for couples:

And the Summer Palace - not very many because battery was low - this place was beautiful and we would have enjoyed spending a bit more time there:

And a LOT of pictures of the scenery in Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City: