Two new arrivals

Our numbers have been getting low with the adoptions of Tiantian, Benjamin, Jasmine and Jeannie. It was time to add to our crew, so we found Karlee and Nicholas in the baby room of the big O a few weeks ago. It is has been really busy because Nicholas has spent a lot of time in at the hospital getting checked out with no success in diagnosing his problems. Luckily, there have been a family of three sisters and a cousin who are here from the US and they have been so helpful. I did not have to go to the hospital and it has turned out to be a huge cultural experience for them......thank you all so much : )

Nicholas is really small for his age and it took a while before I decided that is spite of the doctors, who thought he did not have a heart condition, that we should do an echo. The echo discovered that he has three parts to his heart condition and that he will in fact need heart surgery as soon as I can arrange it. He has been eating well and is picking up weight nicely. I hope this constant feeding will help him prepare for the surgery.

Karlee on the other hand is looking more like a chipmunk everyday. After the second day, all she does is eat and sleep. That is music to my ears because when they do that I know all is well. Sean slept like this for four months and healed his heart in the process and I am hoping that Karlee will do the same. She has PFO which is a whole in a special place between the chambers of the heart. Dr Li thinks that it is possible that this could spontaneously heal and so we will monitor it and she how she does.

The cute thing has been to see Jade and especially Rebecca with the babies. The two of them play mother so well. Rebecca cannot get enough holding and loving on them. We have to protect them well because she will just smother them with kisses. They are hard pressed to understand why "baby" works for both of them but one is a "di-di" (little brother) and the other one is a "mei-mei" (little sister).

So here we are back to 20 babies at Starfish. We are waiting for Nathaniel/Will's family to come at the end of the month and maybe one of these days Gabriel's family will get their travel approval. They have been waiting such a long time ad I know he needs a family to spend one-on-one time with.

This is a few days later...... I called Dr Li and he asked me to come to Hangzhou immediately. We flew the next day. After we got here they redid a lot of the testing preparing him for surgery and then morning Dr Li talked to me about Nicholas. He told me that this is the most difficult case I have ever brought him and Nicholas has about a 90% chance of surviving the surgery. The other issue seems to be spina bifida. There is a strange thing happening at the back of his head. Because Nicholas need some time to fatten up Dr Li thought that he could wait for the surgery but that Nicholas needed to stay in Hangzhou in case of an emergency. Before we could arrange a foster family Nicholas started having seizures and landed up in the NICU where he is right now. They did a lumbar puncture which was negative and we have been waiting for more news. We left him in the NICU and came back to Xian for Nathaniel's adoption on Sunday. More in the next letter about that. I will be going back as soon as Nicholas is released from the NICU and then I will see what we can do about having him stay with a foster family while he gets some more nutrition.

Life, Love and Laughter in Hangzhou,

Amanda

Starfish Foster Home

http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com/

http://www.chinesestarfish.org/

chinese.starfishthrower@gmail.com

Cell: 1348.812.4847